By Francis Ntow
Accra, April 29, GNA – Dr Kwaku Afriyie, the Minister of Environment, Science, Technology, and Innovation, has expressed confidence in Africa emerging stronger from the current economic crisis facing the region.
“We can win the economic battle and it’s not too late. Africa has everything it needs to succeed,” Dr Afriyie said, while urging African leaders to ensure that they used politics to unite their citizens for economic prosperity.
The Minister said this at the third Africa Economic Summit in Accra, noting that Africa, the world’s second-largest Continent with a population of 1.4 billion people, required an African-centric development path to solve its problems effectively.
“In the economic realm, we should not use Western standards to define things and make things difficult for us. I’m not romanticising poverty, there’s poverty here. We have to address those issues. We can grow at our own pace and then get our own development act together,” he said.
“We have to realise our potential because Africa looks like our narrative has been hijacked with many negative stories and we tend to believe them. So, the standards that even the West sets for us, in terms of development, we should question and even reject them, so we develop our own metric,” Dr Afriyie said.
Urging African governments and the people to be hopeful of a better tomorrow, the Minister said Africa’s journey had been long and complex, marked by centuries of colonisation, slavery, and economic exploitation.
He, however, noted that the people of Africa had
demonstrated outstanding resilience, strength, and creativity in the face of adversity, including Ebola, HIV/AIDS, and COVID-19, all of which the continent demonstrated resilience, and said “there is hope.”
Speaking on the theme: “New Africa, New Opportunities,” Mr Brian Reuben, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Africa Economic Summit Group, said the current crisis facing the continent presented an opportunity to rewrite the story of Africa.
“We need to realise that the solutions to our problems must come from within us. We need to be able to tell our story ourselves from our perspective, say Africa has huge resources and we cannot allow ourselves just to be controlled by external influences,” he said.
He added: “We need to show the international community that Africa is strong. We need to be able to negotiate better with anybody who is interested in Africa, whether China, Germany, or United States,” and called for deepened development collaboration among African states.
The Director of Investor Service of Ghana Investment Promotion Centre, Mr Edward Ashong Larbi, was also confident that Africa would overcome the current economic crisis and urged governments to remove all the bottlenecks to enhance trade.
He outlined several initiatives taken by the Ghana Investment Promotion Authority (GIPC), including its Aftercare Service to ensure a business-friendly atmosphere in Ghana for all investors.
On his part, Dr Sam Ikoku, Founder and CEO, Blackstone Equity Limited, asked governments to deepen their partnerships with various private entities, noting that such collaborations are catalysts for a win-win economic growth and job creation.
The Africa Economic Summit, a two-day annual conference has assembled government officials, businessmen, heads of financial institutions and investors from about 10 countries including Kenya, Gambia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Liberia to provide lasting solutions to Africa’s economic challenges from an African perspective.
A white paper would be released at the end of the summit, detailing coordinated actions that governments and institutions should implement for the improvement of Africa’s economy and addressing other challenges on the continent.
GNA