A High Level Parliamentary Delegation from the State of Israel paid a courtesy call on the Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Hon Charles Owiredu, on Wednesday, October 10, 2018.
In his welcome remarks, Hon. Charles Owiredu indicated that Ghana and Israel have had excellent relations and have cooperated in various areas. He underscored the high profile visits between the two countries and added that the visit by the delegation of the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) to the country would further strengthen the relations between them and their Ghanaian counterparts and by extension the two countries.
The Deputy Minister intimated that Ghana hopes to learn from the expertise of Israel in the areas of irrigation, value addition to crops and infrastructure development in order to attain her industrialization agenda. He also noted that a lot of Ghanaians travel to Israel for religious purposes and that is promoting tourism for Israel. He added that Ghana would learn from Israel on how to maximize tourism potentials for the country’s benefit.
He assured of Ghana’s commitment towards supporting efforts targeted at achieving peace, because “democracy and development cannot thrive without peace”. He added that Ghana is a peaceful country and the procedure for doing business in Ghana has greatly improved. He therefore called on Israeli investors to consider Ghana as a place to do business. He also indicated that the government sees the private sector as a partner in development . He cited the Ashesi University as one such example of how the private sector can contribute towards the human resource development of the country.
Hon. Owiredu thanked Israel for supporting Ghana in the areas of agriculture, water and healthcare as well as the construction of the University of Ghana Medical Centre. He also acknowledged the various scholarships extended to Ghanaians under MASHAV (Israel’s Agency for International Development and Cooperation), and commended Israel for sending 80 volunteers to Ghana to support in rural areas.
The leader of the Israeli Parliamentary delegation, MK Dr. Avraham Neguise, on his part said the parliamentary group was in Ghana to learn and share experiences with their counterparts. He stated that Israel cherishes the relations with Ghana which has been in existence for more than 50 years, adding that the visit by the delegation was to further deepen the friendship between the two countries.
He thanked Ghana for contributing to peacekeeping in the world and expressed his country’s condolences to Ghana for the death of the former United Nations Secretary-General, Late Kofi Annan, acknowledging the work he did for humanity. He assured that MASHAV would do more to help build the human resource capacity of Ghanaians.
A member of the delegation, MK Dr. Elie Elalouf noted that institutions that offer engineering and technology courses in his country also add the teaching of courses in entrepreneurship to help the students maximize their full potentials.
He indicated that the delegation had earlier on visited Ashesi University in the Eastern Region of the country, adding that when relations are established between similar institutions in Ghana and Israel, it would be beneficial to the students in both countries.
©IPAB