Let's stop shipping raw, buying finished products — NDC's Nii Tetteh Laryea Cyril

Deputy Director of the Youth Employment Agency, Nii Tetteh Laryea Cyril, popularly called TLC, says President John Dramani Mahama's recent foreign engagements have set a new economic agenda for Ghana and Africa to end the raw material export trap.

Speaking on Ahotor FM's 'Yepe Ahunu', Nii Laryea said Mahama's message on the global stage was not just about Ghana, but about a complete shift in how Africa creates value from what it owns.

According to him, the president is pushing for a continent that processes what it produces and trades more with itself.

"This is the new paradigm. This is the new course that we have to take," Nii Laryea said, summarizing Mahama's call to fellow African leaders.

He argued that Africa's biggest economic contradiction has lasted too long - rich in gold, cocoa, oil, bauxite and other resources, yet poor in value retention because everything leaves raw and returns expensive.

Nii Laryea said the model must change. Africa, he noted, must industrialise, add value locally, manufacture finished goods and keep the jobs and profits on the continent.

He used Ghana's cocoa sector to illustrate the loss. Ghana is the world's leading cocoa producer, he said, but the real money is made after the beans leave the country and are turned into chocolates and confectioneries abroad.

"We cannot continue to be just cocoa producers. We must become chocolate producers. That is where the value, the jobs and the foreign exchange are," he argued.

For him, the President's position signals a new direction where Africa must stop outsourcing its industrialisation.

He said the continent cannot continue to depend on Europe, Asia and America to process its raw materials and then import those same products at higher prices.

Instead, he said, each African country must identify what it has comparative advantage in and build the factories and skills to process it fully.

He also stressed intra-African trade as the game changer. If African countries trade more among themselves, he said, wealth will stay within the continent and businesses will have a bigger regional market to grow.

On development financing and skills, the YEA Deputy Director pointed to the Ghanaian diaspora as a major untapped asset.

Ghanaians abroad, he said, should not be seen as outsiders but as part of Ghana's human capital - with skills, capital, networks and global experience ready to be tapped.

He argued that government must create the right environment that makes it attractive for Ghanaians both home and abroad to work, invest, and build businesses in Ghana.

Ultimately, he maintained, Africa's prosperity will not come from exporting raw materials, but from building its own productive capacity to manufacture, employ its youth and own its value chain.