APA – Accra (Ghana)
President Akufo-Addo’s appeal to fellow African leaders and actors to harness nuclear energy to help address Africa’s developmental challenges is one of the leading stories in the Ghanaian press on Tuesday.
The Graphic reports that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has urged fellow African leaders and actors to harness nuclear energy to help address Africa’s developmental challenges.
“Together, let us work and harness the power of nuclear energy to address our energy challenges, promote sustainable development, and ensure a brighter future for generations to come,” he added.
The President was speaking at a Gala Dinner at the end of the first-ever US-Africa Nuclear Energy summit and International Framework for Nuclear Energy Co-operation (IFNEC) Ministerial conference in Accra on the theme: “Unlocking Africa’s potential through nuclear energy”.
The dinner, organised by the Nuclear Power Institute of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, was attended by ministers of energy, policymakers, technical experts and influencers on nuclear matters from Africa and across the globe.
The President said the country’s electricity generation mix, as contained in its energy transition plan, envisaged 30 per cent of electricity production from nuclear energy by 2070.
“This strong commitment and position is geared towards clean and affordable electricity to drive our industrialisation agenda.
“It is also to position Ghana as a net power exporter in the ECOWAS region through the West African Power Pool,” he added.
The newspaper says that tomorrow’s budget and economic policy will articulate the government’s commitment to fiscal discipline, spell out support for the private sector and implement growth-focused economic policies.
Also, it will spell out expenditure rationalisation measures, efforts to reduce inflation, further stabilise the cedi and address private sector concerns to boost investment, jobs and growth.
“These policy measures are signals of the government’s dedication to building on and sustaining the current growth momentum,” sources familiar with the budget told the Daily Graphic.
“One of the significant revelations in the budget is expected to be the imminent crossing of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) over a historic mark that will be specified in the budget,” the sources further hinted.
They said the milestone would reflect the effectiveness of the strategic initiatives and policies that the government had rolled out since 2017.
The Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, will lay the 2024 Budget Statement and Economic Policy of the government before Parliament tomorrow.
The presentation will be done on behalf of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in fulfilment of Article 179 of the 1992 Constitution.
The Ghanaian Times reports that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo says the government is developing a compre¬hensive plan that will deal with the challenges of water spillage once and for all.
He explained that, the plan being put together by the inter-ministerial committee would ensure that any future spillage would not result in the destruction of lives and property.
“I am particularly concerned about the problem with the spillage and its effects on the people. The inter-ministerial committee have been established to look into the problem evolving with the spillage,” he added.
President Akufo-Addo was speaking in Accra, yesterday, when a delegation from the Oti Regional House of Chiefs paid a courtesy call on him at the Jubilee House.
President Akufo-Addo assured the traditional leaders of his com¬mitment to tackling the challenges that was impacting negatively on the people of Oti as well as Gha¬naians in general.
He expressed his appreciation to the Regional House of Chiefs for recognising the importance and the development the creation of the Oti Region had brought to the people of the area.
In terms of development infrastructure and development in general, the President said his administration had built 445km of roads in the Oti Region, saying that the government would continue to work for the development of the area.
Earlier, Nana Mprah Besemuna III appealed to the President to help construct a new secretariat for the Regional House of Chiefs.
According to him, the house was currently using a rented four bedroom private apartment for its activities and this was hampering the smooth operations of the activities.
The newspaper says that the African Ex¬port-Import Bank (Afreximbank) has launched an Afri¬can Collaborative Transit Guarantee Scheme (AACTGS) targeted at promoting the smooth move¬ment of goods across the African continent
“This ground-breaking project is a bold step towards improving the competitiveness of cross-bor¬der trade as we announce the historic issuance of the first-ever multi-border transit bond on the continent, and the signing of other facilities that will revolutionise the transit of goods in Africa forever,” Professor Benedict Oramah, Pres¬ident and Board Chairman of the Board of Directors, Afreximbank, said.
Speaking at the launch of the ongoing Intra-African Trade Fair (IATF) 2023 here on Sunday, he said, “We are happy that this inno¬vative collaboration between the Bank and COMESA has yielded the desired result of issuing a single transit bond that makes it possible for the movement of goods across the continent without hindrance.”
Afreximbank in 2021, he said, joined the COMESA Regional Cus¬toms Transit Guarantee (RCTG) Scheme as a Regional Surety, which allowed the bank to issue single transit bonds that were acceptable across all countries in COMESA and also guarantee bonds issued by other sureties within the region.
“The AACT+GS brings us closer to transforming our continent into a single, integrated market. It is a realisation of the aspirations of our fore leaders, who, about six decades ago at the inaugural meeting of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), saw the need for strong continental integration through trade,” he said.
Today, we celebrate the issuance of the first-ever multi-border transit bond in Zambia under the US$10 million facility to Innovate General Insurance (IGI). I am also pleased to announce the provision of US$300 million by Afreximbank to ZEP Re to boost the COMESA Regional Customs Transit Guaran¬tee (RCTG) Pool,” he said.
This substantial financial injection, Prof. Oramah said, underscored the bank’s commit¬ment to bolstering the capacity of the COMESA RCTG Pool, which would instil confidence in traders and businesses, thereby paving the way for increased trade volumes in the region and creating a conducive environment for investment, inno¬vation, and economic growth.
The bank, he said, would be signing a US$30 million Container Guarantee Facility with BSMART System Solutions, which he de¬scribed as another significant step forward in the realm of internation¬al trade and commerce.
GIK/APA