Local Economic Development

The Akuapem North Area as an urbanizing area has provided an ideal or enabling environment for small and medium scale enterprises or businesses to maximize opportunities for economic growth. Thus, measures have been put in place to attract and retain businesses to boost the economic base of the Municipality. This has further helped to create more businesses or induce their growth from small to medium or large scale enterprises as well as generate employment opportunities especially in agriculture, commerce and service sectors. The Municipal Assembly’s IGF has improved in recent past with collection being 103.23percent in 2017.

Opportunities existing in the Municipality for the development of businesses include the Rural Enterprise Project, availability of financial institutions, favorable weather for agriculture, availability of arable land, availability of new technologies, availability of business development services, local business associations, etc. On the other side, however, businesses are faced with challenges like low access to credit facilities, low technology adoption, high cost of raw materials, limited market, lack of improved technologies, poor storage, high post-harvest losses, etc.

Economy of the Municipality

The local economy of the Municipality is made up of Agriculture, Industry/manufacturing and commerce/services. About 37.4% of the economically active population (15 years and older) are employed or engaged in agricultural activities, 46.7% are employed in the commerce or service sector while the remaining 15.9 are employed in the manufacturing sectors. The commerce/service sector is mostly dominated by women and it is not surprising because the women’s population in the Municipality is more than the men.

Commerce / Services

By virtue of the Municipality’s location, its proximity to the national and regional capitals covers a wide range of tertiary activities. These include banking, tuition, telecommunication, hairdressing, driving, tailoring and dressmaking among others. Most of these activities are carried out usually on a small scale. The service sector is mainly the private in-formal type which is growing at a faster rate and employs more people especially women.

Food security

Agriculture is the main occupation of majority of people in the Municipality. It can therefore be said that Agriculture generally plays a vital role in economic development in the municipality. A sound food security situation impacts positively on the development of the area in the sense that the limited resources are not channeled into providing relief services but rather into development. The Municipality has adequate food distribution outlets. On a whole, there are twenty five (25) food distribution outlets.

There is one major market that operates on biweekly basis to ensure increased access to food all year round. In addition, there are also smaller markets located in almost all major towns and communities in the Municipality. There is however, the issue of inadequate storage facilities for storing food during the bumper seasons hence making a lot of farm produce to go waste. Even though there are small scale agro-processing enterprises they are also inadequate in number. There is therefore the need to encourage more youths in MSEs into agro-processing under the Rural Enterprise Programme (REP).

Economic Resources

Tourist Attractions

The Municipality is endowed with a lot of tourist attractions and could be described as “a mine of tourists attractions”. Notable among the attractions is the existence of two main waterfalls namely Amenapa and Obosomase falls. However, little attention has been paid to the industry over the years in terms of development and promotion which would have boosted the local economy by way of job creation and revenue generation.

The Municipal Assembly has develop and promoted the industry by advertising on the internet (website of Assembly) and prepared brochures on them. However, that has not gained much impact because the sector needs a lot of financial investment for physical infrastructural development and promotion. The Municipal Assembly is therefore willing and ready to enter into Public-Private Partnerships with investors interested in the sector so that more jobs can be created for the people, especially the youths as well as generate  more revenue for other developments. The Assembly is in the process of preparing a Municipal Investment Profile which would outline all the existing investment opportunities.

Financial institutions

A number of Financial Institutions such as banks and micro-finance Companies operate and offer financial services to people within the Municipality. Notable among them are the Ghana Commercial Bank (GCB) located at Akropong and Mampong; GN Bank located at Akropong, UniCredit Bank (ATM services) located at Mamfe and Akuapem Rural Bank at Mamfe. The category of customers of the Financial Institutions ranges from salary workers, farmers, industrialists, transport owners, traders, artisans and corporate institutions.

Some of the Financial Services provided by these Institutions are current accounts, savings, deposits, domestic and foreign money transfers, loans and mortgages. The locations of these Financial Institutions are however skewed towards the urban centers thereby making accessibility very poor and hence low savings rate.