Israeli ambassador to Ghana, Shlomit Shufa, has expressed Israel’s interest to support Ghanaian entrepreneurs.
According to her, with the involvement of Israeli experts, Ghanaian entrepreneurs will be offered requisite training to scale up their businesses. She indicated that her country is committed to support Ghana to thrive despite the current difficulties experienced by economies globally.
Shlomit Shufa stated that one of such efforts will be the establishment of a new laboratory that is going to be a “market space and will allow the development, both technological and business-wise of new entrepreneurs in Ghana with very professional counselling by Israeli experts”.
“We are doing this in collaboration with Academic City University College… We will launch officially this project and the flag program of it. We plan to launch it in the first quarter of 2023, it’s already being built and we hope that through this laboratory, we will be able to support not just entrepreneurs from all over Ghana, but all different kinds of communities and provide them with all kinds of classes, workshops and promote technological education both in the universities and beyond that.”
Shlomit Sufa
The Israeli ambassador to Ghana highlighted that the embassy has opened a Trade and Economic Mission and for the last four years, it has had a vibrant activity of having professional experts come to Ghana for all kinds of meeting, collaborations and fintech summits. She expressed optimism that these engagements will be mutually beneficial for both countries.
“There are many more examples of collaboration. We have a national aid agency, Mashav and it is part of the ministry of foreign affairs. With Mashav, we are working with the framework of training the trainers… So, some people are being sent to Israel to take the program there and sometimes we have experts come from Israel to Ghana to do the training here.”
Shlomit Sufa
Trade and investment between Ghana and Israel
Commenting on Israel scaling up trade and investment with Ghana, Shlomit Shufa revealed that the angle of bilateral trade’s impact has been very modest. Nonetheless, she explained that when it comes to Israeli companies that come to work in Ghana, then “we are talking about very nice figures”.
“We are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. And companies that do all kinds of projects in terms of infrastructure, water, health, agriculture; we have a very nice presence, taking the Israel-Ghana collaboration to the next level.”
Shlomit Sufa
Expressing her take on the African Continental Trade Agreement (AfCTA), Shlomit Shufa indicated that it is a wonderful tool and she hopes that Israel and Israeli companies will be able to make use of this tool to improve and increase trade between Israel and Africa.
“As far as I know, we are still in the phase of reviewing and understanding the mechanisms. Once we have an understanding of how best to work with this agreement, then we will know how to move forward.”
Shlomit Sufa
Highlighting on a tour of duty in Ghana so far, Shlomit Sufa stated that Ghana has treated her very well and Israel lots of activities, corporations and the embassy is always planning to do more and contribute more to enhance the relationship between Ghana and Israel.
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