The President of the Republic of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, has made a clarion call on all African leaders to make conscious, deliberate efforts to enhance the capacity of Africa’s financial and multilateral institutions so that they can be well-positioned to support key developmental projects across the continent using the popular catchphrase “God helps those who help themselves.”
He said it is high time African countries look inward to find solutions to some of the daunting challenges the continent is faced with and support themselves to develop rather than relying on foreign assistance before even the very basic projects are carried out.
Delivering the keynote address at the Heads of State and Government’s Dialogue on Saturday, 17February 2024, at the 37th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State of the African Union (AU), the President of Ghana alluded that the global economy is structured in a way that disadvantages the African continent, imploring the leaders gathered to make some fundamental and systemic reforms to the existing one. He recognized that making the reforms will not suffice to deal with the present challenge, but that there should be additional efforts by Africans to ensure that they have a greater influence in the way in which their economies are financed.
“As it stands, virtually all our countries hold our reserves in foreign banks, attracting largely negative rates of interest. The proposal that I am going to put to the plenary is that we should decide that a minimum of 30% of the reserves of each of us, sovereign reserves, should be invested in the African multilateral institutions.”
Nana Akufo-Addo
He named the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Afreximbank as institutions whose balance sheets and capacity should be strengthened so they are well-positioned to support developmental projects on the continent. He was convinced that by increasing the financial power of African institutions, “we will be in a better place to finance our development”.
He chided African leaders at the summit for hastily attending summits organized by developed nations for fear of endangering their relationships. He proposed that the leaders develop an institutional arrangement (economic summit), every year, where leaders of the various countries can meet to discuss strategic economic matters affecting the continent so that they can stop moving around from one country to another.
A Clarion Call To Adopt An African-Wide Mobile Telephony Interoperability
The President of the Republic of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, also used the opportunity to passionately appeal to the African Union to lend their support to the implementation of an Africa-wide mobile telephony interoperability system.
He was convinced that a successful implementation of African-wide mobile interoperability would be a significant boost to Africa’s efforts to become the largest single market through its African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) by permitting millions of people to purchase and sell goods and services across countries in their local currencies.
According to him, “Africa’s ambition to establish the world’s largest single market under AfCFTA will be enhanced mightily by the continent’s leaders adopting a collective, aggressive embrace of the digital economy and its available tools”.
The President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, also expressed his pleasure about the Peduase Compact, a document drafted after a three-day Africa Prosperity Dialogues (APD) 2024, which was widely distributed to leaders at the Summit.
The President informed leaders present at the summit that “participants at this year’s Africa Prosperity Dialogues were unanimous in agreeing that enabling interoperability to have a single pan-African payment system is the easiest, quickest, and most effective way to accelerate and deepen the single market project in Africa”.
He added that it is an easy way to make the AfCFTA immediately meaningful to millions of Africans all over the continent.
