Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia has underlined the need for African countries to give priority to investment in smart infrastructure in an effort to fast-track industrialisation on the continent.
Dr Bawumia said such investment will be critical to delivering the success of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
Speaking at the official opening of the Africa Prosperity Dialogues at the Safari Valley Resort in Adukrom in the Eastern Region today (26 January 2023), Bawumia said Africa must take bold steps to reduce poverty.
“There is the need for smart investment in critical infrastructure, as a continent. We need to produce and trade our way out of poverty and underdevelopment, and we cannot do that without investing in smart infrastructure across the continent,” Bawumia said.
“While the last decades have seen some positive investment, there is the need for additional resources to finance the arteries for trade, which include the physical infrastructure such as roads, rail and energy, digital infrastructure such as data centres, and financial infrastructure to allow for integration of our financial markets,” he said.
Listen to Vice-President Bawumia in the audio clip attached below:
Africa Prosperity Dialogues
The Africa Prosperity Dialogues are symbolically dubbed the Kwahu Summit because the Kwahu people of Ghana, the host nation, represent entrepreneurship and trade and are known to support each other to excel in business.
The Kwahu Traditional Area is also the highest habitable elevation in Ghana.
The organisers of the Kwahu Summit aim to support, by building enhanced intra-African trade, the elevation of Africa and her people to the highest summit of human living, dignity and prosperity.
The 2023 Africa Prosperity Dialogues are the first edition of what will be an annual event. The Dialogues are organised by the Africa Prosperity Network (APN) and partners which include the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat, sited in Ghana, the Presidency of the Republic of Ghana.
Other partners are the United Nations Development Programme (Africa), the Africa Prosperity Fund, the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the Africa-America Institute.
The summit will bring into practical focus the continent’s critical challenges and industrialisation priorities and advance aggressively the commercial and infrastructural interventions to achieve the vision of creating the largest single market in the world, with roughly 1.4 billion Africans.
Summit venues
The Kwahu Summit will be a pan-African economic platform which brings together the great minds and might of Africa, both in Africa and the diaspora, to think, plan and work together to expedite implementation of the agreed initiatives within the AfCFTA and to shape the Africa Agenda for Action.
The business and policy leaders’ dialogues, which is currently underway at the Safari Valley Resort in Adukrom, in the Akuapem Mountains.
On 28 January, the Peduase Presidential Lodge in Aburi, also in the Akuapem Mountains, will host the presidential and business executives’ dialogues.
Fred Dzakpata
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