Opening the fifth edition of the Ghana Garden and Flower Show in Accra last Friday, the First Lady said: “I believe 60 years is long enough for us to re-examine the structure of our economy. We need to diversify our economy.

“There is abundant wealth to be made from the land. We did it with cocoa and other cash crops. The country can become a significant player in floriculture on the international stage,” Mrs Akufo-Addo said.

The theme for the flower show is: “Flower Ghana, grow Ghana”.

Challenge to youth

The First Lady challenged the youth to seize the opportunities available from the country’s flora and fauna and focus their attention on the horticultural and floricultural sector, since it had many opportunities for them to create wealth.  

“In particular, my challenge goes to women whose resourcefulness in Ghana is well known. I am counting on women to encourage our children to realise that there is wealth in the land,” she said.

Ghana, she said, was blessed with a conducive climate all-year-round and “we have the land to develop large-scale flower plantations to export.”

Mrs Akufo-Addo said the experience of other African countries, such as Kenya and Ethiopia, prove that Ghana too could earn a lot of foreign exchange from exporting flowers.

Creating jobs

Ghana’s Ambassador to The Netherlands, Ms Sophia Horner-Sam, in a remark, said there was the need to make conscious efforts to encourage people to tap into the enormous benefits of the floricultural industry.

“This is a billion-dollar industry but unfortunately, as a country we are yet to fully explore this lucrative industry,” she added.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Strategic Communications Africa Limited, Ms Esther Cobbah, said this year, as part of the show, the conferences and the workshops that would be held would seek to focus on the potential of floriculture and horticulture to help develop the youth, saying planting flowers helped in creating jobs.

She said the theme for this year’s show was directly focused on the country and would contribute immensely to the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which highlight the elimination of poverty and hunger and the need to ensure that people could enjoy prosperous lives within a healthy and well-preserved environment.

In a remark, the Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Professor Kwabena Frimpong Boateng, said there were many opportunities to be harnessed in the floricultural and horticultural industry.

He said gardens and flowers could help develop the country and urged people to take the responsibility to harness those resources for their own benefit.