Africa is known for it’s many resources which for years have been exported to other countries because we have failed to develop our own continent to produce and manufacture these raw materials into finished goods, from oil which is taken from oil-producing nations, refined in foreign countries and sold back to us, to food resources that have multiple applications which aren’t explored only to be expended and returned. In colonial times, it can be understood and taken as exploitation of our natural resources, but decades after attaining independence, we still depend on foreign aid for most of our livelihood.

Ghana will be one of the African countries in the West finally taken a step to curb this, a senior minister in Ghana Mr Yaw Osafo Marfo has hinted on plans by the government to halt the export of raw materials from Ghana to enrich other economies. On 15th of March, at Batsona, during the inauguration of the Tema West Municipal Assembly which was carved out of the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA), he shared his views on this saying;

There will be no export of raw materials from this country. Government is determined that we are going to have value added to our raw materials to create employment for our own people live in poverty. We cannot have a situation in which our raw materials are used to create employment for people elsewhere whilst our people live in poverty. We want jobs for our people. The number one problem we have in Ghana today is unemployment, but we always export our raw materials unprocessed for them to process which brings a lot of revenue and create jobs for their people. So the government has resolved that it won’t allow the export of these materials without adding value to them here in Ghana.

African nations stopping exports of raw materials to grow their own economy should be a growing trend considering it gravitates towards recent movements of Africa being more reliant on itself.