The Northern Caucus of Parliament is rallying the support of the diplomatic community and development partners to drive economic transformation across the five northern regions of Ghana.

Speaking during a high-level stakeholder engagement with members of the diplomatic corps, Majority Leader and Chair of the Northern Caucus, Mahama Ayariga, emphasised the need for strategic partnerships to create sustainable jobs and unlock the region’s economic potential.

Speaking during a stakeholders’ meeting with some members of the diplomatic corps, Majority Leader and Chair of the caucus, Mahama Ayariga, pushed for partnerships to deal with youth unemployment by creating sustainable jobs.

Mr. Ayariga said, “The northern part of this country has huge, vast expanse of arable land that remains undeveloped and unirrigated. And then the youth of the north are compelled to run to the south to come and engage in menial jobs, and some go to the cocoa-growing areas to try and work in the forest belt because there the rainfall patterns enable agriculture to be done better than up north. And so you have vast populations of northerners relocating to the south because of the inability of our northern leadership to offer them the same opportunities up north.”

He continued, “And even worse, many of the young people, lured by the promise of getting rich fast through mining, have invaded the forest belt where small-scale mining activities are taking place. They’ve abandoned school; they go hoping that when school reopens, they go back and they never return. And it has just become their lives.”

To address these challenges, Mr. Ayariga disclosed that the Northern Caucus has resolved to focus on developing the agricultural potential of the north to serve as Ghana’s breadbasket.

“We took a decision that one area we want to focus on is developing the agricultural potential of the north as the breadbasket of the country,” he said. “We believe that’s something we can do. So we took some strategic decisions, looked at past studies that have been done regarding the potential of the north as a breadbasket of the country, and decided to zero in on that one project.”

He added, “And so we invited our regional ministers from all five regions. They came down, and then we engaged the regional ministers on the idea of transforming the north into the breadbasket of the country. And the regional ministers bought into the idea.”

Mr Ayariga explained that the ministers were further tasked to identify viable areas for investment in commercial agriculture.

“And so we tasked them to go back and then study the various available locations where we could really try and then mobilise investments into large-scale commercial agriculture. And so they went back, they did their studies, and then they sent us their reports. We decided that we needed to build the capacity of our regional ministers to really anchor this initiative,” he said.

He disclosed that, as part of this effort, “the Northern Caucus raised funds and sent all five regional ministers, and they were joined by the Bono regional minister to South Africa, where they spent 10 days in the Limpopo province of South Africa, which has similar geographical features as northern Ghana.”

Comprising Members of Parliament from both sides of the House, the Caucus aims to foster collaboration beyond political lines to tackle youth unemployment, food insecurity, and infrastructural challenges in northern Ghana.