$1 Billion Free Zones Success Inspires New SEZ Policy /Minister Ofosu-Adjare

Story by Fada Amakye

The Minister for Trade, Agribusiness and Industry, Elizabeth Ofosu-Adjare, says Ghana’s new Special Economic Zone (SEZ) policy will focus on solving real investor problems rather than just offering incentives.

Speaking at a forum, she said lessons from the Free Zones enclave showed that incentives alone do not create competitive industrial zones.

Incentives alone do not create competitive industrial zones. Infrastructure matters, governance matters, finance matters. Investors do not simply seek incentives, they seek certainty, she said.

The Minister said well-designed SEZs must offer litigation-free land with clear titles, dependable power and water, predictable regulation, and proximity to ports and logistics.

She said as someone who spent 22 years in courtrooms, she knows how land litigation frustrates investors and that investor-ready land removes one of the biggest bottlenecks to industrial investment in Ghana.

She announced that government, through TDC Ghana Limited and the Ghana Integrated Aluminium Development Corporation (GIADEC), has partnered with Arise Integrated Industrial Park, an African industrial developer, to build an integrated industrial park.

The park, she said, sits within the 2,000-hectare Tema industrial area, about 7 kilometres from the Tema Port, with TDC providing the land.

The partnership is expected to create over 4,000 direct jobs and attract textile manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, automotive component producers and agribusiness firms.

Government cannot build this alone. We want more private capital and expertise in developing our industrial parks, she said.

She said government is also reforming the Free Zones Authority Act into a modern Special Economic Zones framework to support industrial parks across the country with better governance and sector-specific incentives.

According to her, companies operating within the free zones earned close to $1 billion in export revenue in 2025, with new investments creating more than 1,600 direct jobs.

She cited examples including Jordan Ghana at the Tema Free Zones Enclave which employs 450 workers producing garments for export, and Zumanu Energy, Ghana’s first high-efficiency solar cell factory, employing about 300 workers at the Dawa Industrial Zone.

She stressed that the zones must not become isolated enclaves but must create opportunities for Ghanaian SMEs, link farmers to processors, and allow technical institutions to supply needed skills.