President John Dramani Mahama has opened bilateral talks with Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa at Peduase Lodge, putting mining cooperation, agricultural knowledge sharing, renewable energy and a potential direct air link between Accra and Harare at the centre of what he called a relationship that went far beyond diplomacy.
President Mahama noted that Peduase Lodge itself carried symbolic weight for the occasion, having been built under the leadership of Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, a fitting setting, he said, for talks between two countries whose bond was forged in the same Pan-Africanist fire that Nkrumah lit.
He said the ties between Ghana and Zimbabwe were enriched by personal and historical connections that formal diplomatic language could not fully capture, pointing to the legacy of President Robert Mugabe, whose time living and working in Ghana and whose family ties to the country had cemented a closeness between the two peoples that endured to the present day.
On the substance of the bilateral agenda, President Mahama said the mining sector offered one of the most immediate areas for deeper cooperation.
Both countries, he said, were richly endowed with natural resources, and the priority had to be responsible mining practices alongside value addition and beneficiation, keeping more of the wealth generated from Africa’s resources on the continent rather than exporting raw materials for others to process and profit from.
In agriculture, President Mahama said Ghana had much to learn from Zimbabwe’s experience in irrigation and climate-smart farming, and that the two countries needed to build on that exchange to strengthen food security on both sides.
He also pointed to renewable energy and power infrastructure as areas of scope for collaboration, linking both to the broader goal of industrialisation and economic transformation that each country was pursuing.
President Mahama made a particular case for tourism cooperation, floating the idea of linking Cape Coast and Victoria Falls as complementary destinations, combining Ghana’s deep historical heritage with Zimbabwe’s world-renowned natural attractions in a way that could draw visitors to both countries.
Improved connectivity was essential to making any of it work, he said, and he put a direct air link between Accra and Harare on the table as a practical step toward facilitating trade, tourism and investment between the two countries.
President Mahama also pointed to the structural foundations already in place, a longstanding visa-free travel agreement between the two countries, a General Cooperation Agreement signed in 2023, and the inaugural meeting of the Permanent Joint Commission for Cooperation, as a platform the two sides could build on decisively.
He said Ghana’s position as host of the African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat and Zimbabwe’s standing within the Southern African Development Community created a unique opportunity to strengthen the economic linkages between West and Southern Africa at a moment when the continent urgently needed to deepen intra-African trade and investment.
Richard Aniagyei, ISD
