Ghana’s Minister of Trade and Industry, Alan Kyerematen, has indicated that African countries must adopt innovative financing models to close the infrastructure gap in order to leapfrog to the fourth Industrial Revolution stage.

Mr. Kyerematen said this when he participated in a high-level event organised by UNIDO on the sidelines of the 74th United Nations General Assembly in New York.

According to him, the NPP administration is leveraging Ghana’s natural resources to develop the right infrastructure through the setting up for industrial parks and special economic Zones, Railways and ICT infrastructure for businesses to take advantage of them.

The event attended by the President of Zambia, the President of Guinea, Vice President of Cote d’Ivoire, UNIDO Director-General, UNCTAD Secretary-General, African Union Trade Commissioner, among other global leaders, was on the theme “Promoting innovation and infrastructure development”: a pathway for boosting manufacturing in the Fourth Industrial Revolution”.

Mr. Kyerematen who is an International Trade Analyst stated that poor infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa adds about 35% to the cost of goods traded among countries in the region.

In his view, one of the ways to make local businesses competitive at the global stage is to enhance access to both soft and hard quality infrastructure.

He thus invited the private sector to partner multilateral institutions to raise affordable capital to finance infrastructure projects in order to facilitate industrial development to take advantage of the growing African middle-class consumers.

Mr. Alan Kyerematen later joined the Ministerial Panel as Africa’s representative at the Global Manufacturing and Industrialization Summit at the United Nations Headquarters