Speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on the sidelines of a capacity-building workshop for selected artisans and farmers at the Suame Magazine in Kumasi, he said “it is important to provide our industries with ready market to enable them to expand, to create wealth and hire more people”.

The five-day programme aimed at helping to improve the agricultural value chain to transform the living conditions of the Ghanaian farmer. Held under the theme “Creative capacity building for commercialization”, it create the opportunity to make some structural changes to prototype agricultural equipment, which had been developed by the ITTU – to correct any flaws.

He indicated that efforts to put the economy on even keel and hold back the growing unemployment would struggle if deliberate policy measures were not put in place to protect the local industries. Mr. Appiah, who has manufactured a new ‘fufu’-pounding machine which comes with a wooden augar and operates on fuel, said the over-reliance on imported products was not helpful to the health of the economy and needed to change.

He spoke of the tremendous work the ITTU had been doing to build the capacity of artisans at the Suame Magazine in the use of locally available materials to develop industrial equipment. He said there could not be any doubt that given the necessary financial and technical support the artisans could lead the transformation of the country’s industrial sector.

He appealed to the government to give priority to the development and promotion of local technology.