The call by President Akufo-Addo for African nations and their financial institutions to come up with a new economic model that will serve the interest of their peoples and not profit advanced nations is one of the trending stories in the Ghanaian press on Wednesday.
The Graphic reports that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has challenged African nations and their financial institutions to come up with a new economic model that will serve the interest of their peoples and not profit advanced nations.
That, he explained, was necessary because “profits from our resources have benefited foreign creditors for far too long, while we suffer abusive borrowing cost on the international capital markets”.
The President added that there was no basis for African economies to be saddled with the so-called ‘African Risk Premium’, which translated into higher spreads for European and North American counterparts, particularly when African resources were the catalyst for the economic advancement of Western nations.
President Akufo-Addo, who is the African Union (AU) Champion for Gender and Financial Institutions, made the call when he opened the annual general meeting of the African Development Bank (AfDB) in Accra on Tuesday, May 24, 2022.
In attendance at the four-day meetings are the Presidents of Mozambique and Tanzania, Filipe Jacinto Nyusi and Samia Suluhu Hassan, respectively; the Vice-President of Cote d’Ivoire, as well as Finance ministers from Africa and other stakeholders from around the world.
President Akufo-Addo said it was high time Africa worked hard to address and remove the structural barriers to its development and also dealt with tax avoidance and illegitimate commercial transactions by multinationals.
He noted that those underhand dealings accounted for 60 per cent of the $88 billion which accounted for illicit financial outflows from the continent annually and other relationships that inhibited Africa’s development.
The newspaper says that the President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Dr Akinwumi Adesina has said that “The ongoing energy transition process to ensure cleaner sources of energy must not short-change Africa’s growth and development.”
He said although there was the need to move to cleaner sources of energy, Africa could not rely only on renewables for stable energy to power industrialisation.
He said natural gas must therefore be part of Africa’s energy transition mix.
Dr Adesina said this at the opening of AfDB’s 57th Annual Meeting which is being held in Accra between May 23 and 27.
He said as per the Paris Agreement, African countries were committed to reducing their carbon emissions through energy transitions.
He noted that Africa had abundant renewable energy resources, including solar, hydro, wind and geothermal resources.
“The AfDB is spearheading investments in renewable energy and over 86 per cent of the energy generation investments by the bank are in renewable energy,” he stated.
He said the continent could, however, not rely only on renewables, due to their intermittency.
“Africa needs to combine renewables with natural gas to ensure stability and security of energy, and to improve access and affordability, as well as energy security,” he stated.
The Graphic also reports that the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, has called on the African Development Bank (AfDB) to position itself as the centre of Africa’s post-pandemic recovery.
He said the development bank must lay out a road map through its ongoing annual meetings that would allow the continent to build back better and effect a tectonic shift in the global financial architecture.
Mr Ofori-Atta said this in an address at the opening of the AfDB annual meetings in Accra on Tuesday, May 24, 2022.
He urged African Finance ministers and the board of the AfDB to use this year’s annual meetings to bring attention to the fact that the global financial architecture did not provide the requisite benefits needed by low- and middle-income countries to develop.
“Access to external capital markets is limited and costly. Currently, only 21 African countries have a track record of capital market access.
“Additionally, African countries with market access pay higher interest rates than their peers with similar or worse economic fundamentals,” he said.
He said estimates of what might be termed the “African premium” ranged from 100 to 260 basis points (one to 2.6 percentage points), even after accounting for economic fundamentals.
The Finance Minister pointed out that although the multilateral and bilateral partners introduced well-meaning initiatives, such as the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) and the Common Framework for Debt Treatment, their impact had been limited.
To date, he said, the three countries (Chad, Ethiopia and Zambia) that subscribed to the initiative were yet to receive debt reliefs.
The Ghanaian Times says that the Senior Presidential Advisor at the Presidency, Mr Yaw Osafo Maafo, has called on Ghanaians to put away their differences and forge ahead as a united people in combating the threats of terrorism in the country.
According to him, the fight against the increasing threats of terrorism in the country could only be won if all Ghanaians came together and actively supported the security agencies in that direction.
Mr Osafo Maafo made the call at the official launch of the programme “If you see something, say something” by the Ministry of National Security in Accra yesterday.
The campaign formed part of the government’s broader counter-terrorism activities.
It aimed at heightening the awareness and vigilance of the citizenry on issues of violent extremism and terrorism.
Mr Osafo said for the first time in the history of the country, it was faced with a serious risk of a spillover of terrorist attack from the sub-region.
He said Ghana was a peaceful and stable nation despite its location in a volatile sub-region.
“This is evident by the fact of the outcome of the second edition of the global peace index which run 163 independent countries according to their level of peacefulness where Ghana was ranked the first in West Africa, second in Africa and 38th in the world,” he said.
GIK/APA