Former Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo says Ghana still has time to reset its industrial path and embrace value addition as the engine of growth.

“It’s never too late. It’s never too late,” she declared on Joy News’ PM Express Business Edition on Thursday. “I am in full agreement with the President on that.”

For her, the case for an industrial reset is rooted in history. She said she has seen a period in Ghana “where from whatever processing, raw processing of raw materials, a few, what can be done, the industries that get spun off.”

She pointed to the ripple effects of processing raw materials locally. “Even with the main product, inspect in respect of which the main industry exists, what benefits it gives, what volumes you can export, how you can conquer markets within the region, within the continent, and even across to other parts of the world.”

“If we had kept going with that concept of value addition, we would be very far ahead of where we are now,” she said.

Using oil refining as an example, she outlined the chain of opportunities it creates.

“Oil refinery, it leads to petroleum jellies, tyre and bitumen, it leads to all the other things, you know, refined the product, refined products of crude kerosene.”

She recalled that “there were airlines which would stop in Ghana just to top up on jet fuel, for example, because jet fuel was being produced here.”

Her prescription was direct. “We should stop this thing of exporting raw materials and then sitting here and using money to import finished products. Let’s finish the products here, too.”

On concerns about capital and foreign investment, she was pragmatic. “Even if you have to do that, the value is being added here. It’s the terms you’re going to insist on.”

She cited the Tema Oil Refinery. “Those days, we were even importing the crude rather than producing the crude. Here we’re importing the crude. But even with that, the TOR was one of the best employers in the country.”

“There were industries that were spun off their byproducts, which included plastics, including petroleum jelly, which can be used in so many different products, from medical products to cosmetic products and so on and so forth. Lipstick was being produced in Ghana. All kinds of things were being produced in Ghana.”

Turning to gold, she said smelting locally must be matched by skills development. “Our jewellers are going to have to also invest in their know-how to produce beautiful jewellery.”

She noted that the University of Science and Technology “has, for the longest, had a jewellery section.”

She blamed past structural limits for small-scale outcomes. “Because the government was taking everything and then putting it straight, and sometimes from Obuasi straight to the airport, what would get to the PMMC would be a little amount.”

The result, she said, was a weak local market. “Every time you went to their showroom, you felt disappointed, because variety isn’t there.”

She contrasted that with Dubai. “If you go to shops in Dubai, there’s gold everywhere, but they don’t mine gold there. Most of their gold is from here.”

She believes higher skills and new markets can emerge. Tourists, she noted, are often disappointed that Ghana lacks “a gold jewellery market that you may be there’s a whole street where there’s all kinds of stuff you can choose from.”

When it was suggested Obuasi missed out, her response was sharp: “Big time!”