She acknowledged that most of the consumer goods on the market today were manufactured in China, saying: “When it comes to consumer goods, if you look at all the gadgets that you are holding now, they may carry all the fancy brand names, but when you look closely, you will realise that they are made in China.”

“Moving on, we want you to also come and establish companies here taking advantage of the one-district, one-factory flagship programme of this government,” she urged the Chinese investors.

Huawei flagship programme

Mrs Owusu-Ekuful was addressing the Staff of Huawei Technologies Ghana, a Chinese company, and the staff of the Chinese Embassy in her office in Accra.

The Chinese company was at the ministry to launch the third edition of its flagship corporate social responsibility programme dubbed: “Huawei Seed for the Future” programme, in which 15 Ghanaian students selected from four universities would be participating in China.

The students, who are expected to leave Ghana on May 29, 2017, and return on June 10, 2017, will be hosted at the headquarters of the Huawei Technologies in Shenzhen and also in Beijing.

They will be equipped with  ICT skills and also exposed to future trends in technology.

Applications and software 

Mrs Owusu-Ekuful said: “I have no doubt that we can build application and software industries here because of the wide range of innovative ideas our young people are exhibiting to enable the young people to showcase the talents they have.”

She encouraged Huawei Technologies and other Chinese companies to consider the ICT area, lauding the role of Huawei in the technology world and in Ghana’s effort at digitisation.

Mrs Owusu-Ekuful recalled that Ghana and China had good relationship and “we would like to build on it”, saying that going forward there would be many more interactions.

China open policy

The Political Counsellor of the Chinese Embassy to Ghana, Mr Jiang Zhouteng, said the Chinese government had outlined five key development concepts with innovation top on the list.

He said since the adoption of the reform and opening up policy, China had undergone profound changes and the country  had become the world’s second largest economy.

“China’s economy still grows at a relatively high speed around six to seven per cent annually and one of the most important reasons for China’s development miracle, in my view, is that China highly values the spirit of innovation, which is extremely important in the ICT industry,” he explained.