A highly significant African public-private partnership discourse opens in Banjul on Thursday through to Friday, bringing together a fine array of financial and institutional leaders and stakeholders rubbing minds on developmental transformations of the continent in the 21st century.
PPP stakeholders meeting in the West African country are looking to reconcile disparate ideas envisioning Africa beyond the sterile rhetoric about a continent of opportunities to a region with a clear development trajectory that was both discernable and achievable.
‘The event is ”more than a space for influence and ideas, celebrating innovation, African integration, and the emergence of regional champions” says a statement from its organisers under the so-called Financial Afrik Awards.
The Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara International Conference Centre in Bijilo, a swanky suburb outside the Gambian capital is hosting the event which also includes a special awards gala to name and celebrate Africa’s 100 most outstanding shapers of the continent’s economic landscape over the past on year.
These often distinguished personalities are usually chosen through what Financial Afrik Awards says is a rigorous process and based on the level of impact of their visions, decisions and contributions on economic development in countries on the continent.
Since 2018, these awards have made it into the flagship calender of events for financial stakeholders and like-minded interests in Africa every year.
The theme of the Banjul sessions is anchored around public-private partnerships as a handy alternative to limiting public debt as a burden to developing countries in Africa whose promising economic growth prospects have been hamstrung by the lack of proper drive to improve business regulations.
Some of its thematic sessions will explore PPPs as a means of funding infrastructural developments through the mobilisation of private capital for the timely realisation of socially beneficial projects without compromising fiscal stability.
A key segment of the event is dedicated to the prospect of building a strategic economic alliance between Africa and the Arab world, two demographics linked by geography, shared cultures and religions and recent histories that are not too dissimilar.
With an population surge reaching 1.4 billion, a GDP projected to reach $3 trillion in the next four years, Africa commands the world’s largest free trade area which can complement development in the Arab world. Convergence between through the Arab Coordination Group on the one hand, and the Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions is said to be critical in this Africa-Arab world collaboration.
For the Financial Afrik Awards, the debate has moved on from merely justifying the existence of PPPs to championing for actionable steps to make them remarkably effective – from robust institutions bringing about smart regulations, to transparent contract procedures, reliable legal environments and fairly-shared responsibility between the public and private sectors.
WN/as/APA