President Akufo-Addo has in his capacity as the African Union Champion of Financial Institutions addressed the Boma of Africa (www.africaboma.com), on the ongoing global economic turmoil.
The address was delivered at the invitation of the African Union and AfroChampions.
He strongly urged the assembled leaders to prioritise and focus on collective actions to strengthen Africa’s influence in the global economic order.
He expressed concern that smaller economies, many of them in Africa, often suffer the harshest consequences during global downturns though they contribute the least to the causes of these upheavals.
The international instruments for resolving these crises lack input from smaller economies. Africa therefore needs to invest more in its own instruments for financial crisis management and speed up the emergence of a continental lender of last resort. But even a whole continent cannot alone withstand the full onslaught of a global economic nosedive.
Global cooperation will remain at the base of any strategy for addressing crises of such nature.
Hence President Akufo-Addo’s call for Africa to work together on a unified voice and approach to influencing the decisions taken in continental forums on crisis resolution.
“Continental unity and collective agency are the only paths to building influence to push successfully for the reform of the multilateral economic and financial systems that affect our ability to respond to crises that affect our rise as a continent,” President Akufo-Addo said.
“We cannot assign the responsibility of managing crisis to domestic actors alone. We cannot leave small economies exposed to these vagaries of the international system to their fate and insist that they suffer the consequences alone.”
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
