The vice-president of the United States of America, Kamala Harris, has said she is in Africa to facilitate economic growth and opportunities after arriving in Ghana on Sunday (26 March) to begin her three-nation tour of the continent.
While in Ghana, the 49th vice-president of the US is expected to meet entrepreneurs, students, women and farmers. She will also visit Cape Coast Castle in the Central Region, where enslaved Africans were kept before being shipped to the New World.
“In particular on this trip, I intend to do work that will focus on increasing investment here on the continent, and facilitating economic growth and opportunity, specifically in the areas of economic empowerment of women and girls, empowerment of youth entrepreneurship, digital inclusion and to support the work that must be done to increase food security, including adaptation to the effect of economic crisis,” Vice-President Harris said at Kotoka International Airport in Accra.
She was welcomed at the airport by Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia, who led a government delegation including the Foreign Affairs Minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey.
Also at the airport to welcome Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, was the US ambassador to Ghana, Virginia Palmer, and a host of schoolchildren carrying miniature Ghana flags.
Vice-President Harris said her visit is to strengthen the economic relations between the US and Ghana.
“We are looking forward to this trip as a further statement of the long and enduring and very important relationship and friendship between the people of the United States and those who live on the continent of Africa,” Harris said.
“I am very excited about the future of Africa. I am very excited about the impact of the future of Africa on the rest of the world including the United States of America.
“When I look at what is happening on this continent and the fact that the median age is 19 … and what that tells us about the growth of opportunities, of innovations, of possibilities, I see in all of that great opportunities, and not only for the people of this continent but the people of the world,” she said.
She said: “I am here to address some of the issues that relate to the partnership between this continent, its people and the people of the United States and to reinforce the work that we will continue to do together be that on addressing the climate crisis, to supply chain, to our work together on international rules and nuance.”
Vice-President Harris is scheduled to leave Ghana on 29 March for Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, before ending her tour in Lusaka, Zambia, on 2 April.
