President John Mahama says Ghana is working to add value to its exports.
He was speaking at the Cocoa Touton Processing plant at Tema during a visit by the Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn.
"It is about value addition. Ghana has a similarity with Ethiopia. Ethiopia is one of the leading producers of coffee and we are one of the leading producers of cocoa.
"Part of our programme of transformation is how we take the exports that we have and add value to them so that we can earn more foreign exchange and create more jobs for our people," the president said.
Ghana has for years exported cocoa in its raw form to European countries where value is added and sold back to Ghanaians. The president hoped this development will be a thing of the past.
The Ethiopian Prime Minister also praised Ghana for her drive to process its raw materials.
"The problem with African production was that only the beans have been exported to foreign countries and the value addition was so small and the employment that we generate was so small.
"But thanks to this factory i have seen that the agenda to create more jobs and add more values to our products have been realised in Ghana and it will be a good lesson that Africa should learn to continue on industrializing Africa and manufacturing African products," he stated.