*For border communities of northern Ghana

Story: Kwabena AKYEANA

The Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has called on foreign donors to extend investments to the northern part of the country and other border communities to reduce poverty and halt the potential of recruitment of the youth as terrorists.

Speaking at the Northern Development Authority’s Multi-Stakeholder Consultation with foreign development partners, he noted that poverty could account for the reasons why some residents fall prey to enticements from extremist groups, particularly from neighboring countries.

The stakeholder consultation engagement was to woo foreign donors to invest in the five regions of the north to help bridge the poverty and development gap.

“We would like to see donors also turn their attention to the issue of investing in social amenities in the border regions and communities because a lot of terrorists try to use the lack of availability of social amenities to try to recruit,” the Vice President said.

He noted that the government itself had invested heavily in ensuring development in the border towns, stressing that the Akufo-Addo government had doubled the value of investments in the five regions of the north in the last eight years within four years.

He said while such a venture was  capital intensive, the government was still committed to it.

“We are also paying some attention to that. In fact, when you look at our first four years in government, we’ve almost spent double of what was spent in the previous 8 years just to secure our borders. It is not cheap, but it is very important that we deploy those resources to protect this country so that we are not taken by surprise,” he said.