On April 14, 2012, John Dramani Mahama, the vice president of Ghana, led a delegation to visit Yichang, Li Lecheng, Deputy Secretary and Mayor of Yichang City, met with and hosted a banquet in honor of the Ghana Delegation. Wang Ke, the Deputy Director of the Department of African Affairs of the Foreign Ministry and Zhang Zhengjun, Deputy Mayor of Yichang City, attended the meeting and the banquet. Li Lecheng extended a warm welcome to Mahama and the delegation, made a brief introduction to Yichang City and its economic and social development. He said, Yichang has a good reputation of the hydroelectric capital of the world; our goal is to build Yichang into a famous city featuring hydroelectricity and tourism. Yichang, is the second in economic aggregate of Hubei Province, has been formed an industrial-based modern industrial structure, among which hydroelectricity, equipment manufacturing, chemical industry, food and medicine industries are strong. Furthermore, both the development of economy and the protection of environment are put forward, therefore the city won the fame of National Sanitary City, National Environmental Protection Model City, National Civilized City and other awards. Yichang has established long friendly relations with many African countries including Ghana, among those countries, there are lots of Yichang residents spending holidays and enterprises doing investigations to look for the way of cooperation there. He looked forward to a further communications between Yichang and Ghana. Yichang is willing to make active efforts to consolidate and enhance the friendly exchanges and cooperation between China and Ghana and other African countries.

Mahama expressed his thanks to the warm reception of the Yichang City. He said, Ghana and China have a long history of exchanges and cooperation, he has visited China for five times, but this is his first time to visit Hubei Province and Yichang City. Agriculture is Ghana\'s main industry, which is developing very fast now, and attracts many foreign investment and cooperation. In recent years, there are more and more business communications between Ghana and China, and this visit is for investigating the Three Gorges Project. They were very happy to come to beautiful Yichang, and they believed this visit can promote exchanges and cooperation of the two sides.