The vice-president of the Republic of Ghana, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has charged guests at the maiden summit in the Africa Prosperity Dialogues (APD) series to develop signature solutions, with fearless determination, which will help deepen intra-African trade.
The 2023 Africa Prosperity Dialogues, the first in what will become an annual discussion forum, is taking place from Thursday 26 to Saturday 28 January 2023.
Focusing on getting Africa’s private sector to be fully engaged in the process of Africa’s economic integration, this year’s Africa Prosperity Dialogues have brought together the continent’s political and business leaders, including industrialists, bankers, telecommunications heads and trade ministers.
On Thursday the vice-president of Ghana formally opened the APD at the Safari Valley Resort inAdukrom, in the Eastern Region of Ghana, under the theme “AfCFTA: From Ambition to Action – Delivering Prosperity through Continental Trade”.
Dr Bawumia outlined three priority areas and stressed, “The time has come for Africa and Africans to define our own narrative.”
Africa, the vice-president said, can no longer “allow poverty and underdevelopment to be the destiny of her peoples”, being “a continent so blessed with every natural resource imaginable – oil, gas, minerals and sunshine”.
“As key stakeholders, we must consolidate the successes so far and, with a sense of urgency, develop the signature solutions needed to deepen intra-African trade and spur impactful investments needed to bring prosperity to the continent and its people. And we must do this with fearless determination,” Dr Bawumia said.
Three priority areas
To bring about the transformation Africa needs, Vice-President Bawumia proposed three broad areas that guests at the APD should focus on and treat as priorities as they confer.
“First is the need for smart investments in critical infrastructure,” the vice-president said. “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.
“While the last decades have seen some positive investments, 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 to facilitate the digital transformation; and financial infrastructure to allow for integration of financial markets.
“These investments will be critical to delivering the success of the AfCFTA,” Dr Bawumia said.
“Second is to unleash the productive capacities across the continent. We must create platforms for knowledge brokerage and access to information on critical products and services on the continent to allow 445 million small businesses across the continent to plug into the value chains of these mega-industries.
“We need to develop Africa into a manufacturing zone that will facilitate the trade of value-added products.
These, in my view, will be critical to leapfrog Africa’s industrialisation and the enormous socio-economic benefits,” Dr Bawumia said.
“Finally [there is] mobilising finance and investment. Africa needs between US$130 billion and US$170 billion annually to bridge its infrastructure gap and generate sustainable growth at 5% per annum or more.
“This presents immense opportunities for private sector investment.
“Attracting private sector participation through public-private partnerships [PPPs] is, therefore, essential for the delivery of various infrastructure projects,” Dr Bawumia said.
Wilberforce Asare
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