VW to establish assembling plant in Ghana – Angela Merkel reveals

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has revealed that popular German car maker VW is set to establish an assembling plant in Ghana.

Addressing a joint press conference with President Akufo-Addo, at the foyer of the Jubilee House, Chancellor Angela Merkel, said her administration has watched keenly the decision of the Akufo-Addo administration to propel Ghana beyond aid. She said her country is poised to collaborate with Ghana to make available to Ghana, the best practices that has helped Germany to industrialize.

Car Plant in Ghana

She said the assembling will also create a considerable number of jobs for Ghanaians in the car manufacturing sector. Contributing to the development, President Akufo-Addo said the Ghanaian economy is delighted to welcome the VW vehicle plant into the country. He pledged that Government will give the investor community of Germany every necessary assist that they would require.

Scholarships for Ghanaians

The Chancellor observed that currently, there are about forty two Universities in Germany who offer scholarships to Ghanaian students. She added that these scholarships will continue and her administration will look at how to scale it. President Akufo Addo welcomed the consideration of the Chancellor to shore up the number of scholarships that Germany offers to Ghanaian students.

Illegal Ghanaian Immigrants in Germany

During the question and answer session of the joint press conference, a question was posed on the fate of some 4,000 Ghanaians who have been identified as illegal immigrants in Germany. In her answer, the German Chancellor said her administration has worked out a comprehensive plan to deal with illegal migration in Germany and the rest of Europe. The plan he says will be implemented fairly without any form of discrimination. President Akufo Addo in his answer to the question said there are about 50,000 Ghanaians who live in Germany. 4,000 therefore represent less than 10 percent of this total number. To that end, he suggested that the onus is on the German authority to decide what to do with these supposed illegal immigrants. The President was quick to add that it will be a delight to see Germany grant these Ghanaians amnesty.

The German Chancellor

Angela Merkel is a German politician best known as the first female chancellor of Germany and one of the architects of the European Union. Angela Dorothea Kasner, better known as Angela Merkel, was born in Hamburg, West Germany, on July 17, 1954. Trained as a physicist, Merkel entered politics after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. Rising to the position of chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union party, Merkel became Germany’s first female chancellor and one of the leading figures of the European Union, following the 2005 national elections.

German stateswoman and chancellor Angela Merkel was born Angela Dorothea Kasner on July 17, 1954, in Hamburg, Germany. The daughter of a Lutheran pastor and teacher who moved his family east to pursue his theology studies, Merkel grew up in a rural area north of Berlin in the then German Democratic Republic. She studied physics at the University of Leipzig, earning a doctorate in 1978, and later worked as a chemist at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry, Academy of Sciences from 1978 to 1990.

First Female Chancellor

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Merkel joined the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) political party. Soon after, she was appointed to Helmut Kohl’s cabinet as minister for women and youth, and later she served as minister for the environment and nuclear safety. Following Kohl’s defeat in the 1998 general election, she was named secretary-general of the CDU. In 2000, Merkel was chosen party leader, but she lost the CDU candidacy for chancellor to Edmund Stoiber in 2002.

In the 2005 election, Merkel narrowly defeated Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, winning by just three seats, and after the CDU agreed a coalition deal with the Social Democrats (SPD), she was declared Germany’s first female chancellor. Merkel also became the first former citizen of the German Democratic Republic to lead the reunited Germany and the first woman to lead Germany since it became a modern nation-state in 1871. She was elected to a second term in 2009.