Chairman for Sakfos Holdings Limited and Founder of the National Interest Movement has called for the establishment of air cargo infrastructure in the Northern part of the country.

He believes this will significantly boost agriculture in the country because it will help in the transportation of perishable farm produce from the north to other parts of the country and beyond our shores.

Speaking on the Super Morning Show, on Thursday, he stated that, “We need to extend air cargo infrastructure to Tamale and out of there, as a priority. It is a very serious constraint on agriculture in the North because it confines you to growing low-value crops and when you have made investments in equipment, land development, and to some extent localized infrastructure, and you don’t have this infrastructure, it limits what we can do.

"Therefore, it limits your returns on investments, and also you cannot then diversify and have some low-value crops and some high crops," he stated.

Contributing to discussions that centered on Food Security, Dr. Sakara called for more investments to be made in the sector.

He called for a collaboration between the Tamale airport and other airports in Africa to boost exports of food products to other parts of the world.

“This [Tamale airport] has one of the longest runways in Africa with LED lights, it can host flights at night. For how many years has our investments been sitting only with small planes (domestic flights) going there when for that additional investment, targeted investment and invitation of some airlines like Kenya, Ethiopian Airlines, we can do a North-West African route and that will give us the cargo space that we need.

“Even if you have to give it to them at a concessionary rate, at least, it’s not going to sit there idle and it is also activating the production that is going on in that area. We can have crops harvested and delivered to the European markets,” he added.