Focus on building local economies beyond aid - Veep urges African countries
The Vice-President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has asked African countries to focus on building their local economies beyond aid.
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He said what was required were deliberate policies that would enhance the production capacity of the private sector through the provision of satisfactory incentives for the sector to grow robustly.
“We should remember that the aid landscape is shifting and that aid from traditional donors is fast dwindling across African countries. This means that we must begin to contemplate a future beyond aid,” he stressed.
Dr Bawumia made the call at the opening session of a meeting of Finance ministers from seven African countries who are participating in the G-20 Compact With Africa (CWA) initiative in Accra yesterday.
Meeting
The participating countries are Morocco, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Senegal and Tunisia.
Representatives from other countries, such as Burkina Faso, Benin, The Gambia, Guinea, Liberia and Togo, were also present at the meeting as observers.
The meeting is at the instance of Ghana’s Minister of Finance, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta.
Technical support for the meeting is from the African Centre for Economic Transformation (ACET).
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CWA
The CWA, a G-20 partnership programme to support the African Union’s (AU’s) Agenda 2063, engages African countries in building a reliable financial and macroeconomic framework as a means of expanding investment opportunities, creating employment and pushing for more sustainable infrastructure on the continent.
The meeting of the Finance ministers seeks to address the critical role that the CWA can play in the economic transformation agenda of the countries involved in implementing the compact.
It will also consider how to overcome the challenges regarding the implementation of the CWA, including optimising strategies to improve the business environment, boost domestic resource mobilisation and increase public investments in transformative infrastructure
It is also intended to provide an opportunity for the Finance ministers to initiate a peer learning framework for countries to learn from one another as they address common challenges and leverage the compact for their growth agenda.
Partnerships
Dr Bawumia, who officially opened the meeting, urged the participating countries in the CWA to foster stronger partnerships and share experiences on how to leverage on the prospects of the initiative.
“For Ghana, the compact is an opportunity for the country to refocus attention on key development areas such as renewable energy, agriculture, agro-processing, finance, infrastructure and the petro-chemical industry,” he said.
He said the CWA was an opportunity for the participating countries to seek common solutions to the peculiar challenges they faced.
“While each of the compacts with African countries faces specific challenges at different phases of development, the CWA reinforces that we face common challenges and we must, therefore, collaborate to transform our local economies,” he stressed.
Dr Bawumia observed that it was important for each country in the compact to adhere to prudent management of its expenditure, expand the tax base and step up domestic revenue mobilisation to spur sustainable development.