Ken ofori Attah – Finance Minister
Finance Ministers from seven African countries participating in the G-20 Compact with Africa (CWA) initiative will meet as a group for the first time in Accra, Ghana on Wednesday 6th September at Mövenpick Ambassador Hotel.
The CWA is a G-20 partnership programme to support the African Union Agenda 2063.
The programme engages African countries in building a reliable financial and macroeconomic framework in order to expand investment opportunities, create employment and push for more sustainable infrastructure on the continent.
The meeting will address the critical role that the CWA can play in the economic transformation agendas of Compact countries.
It will also consider how to overcome some challenges in the CWA’s implementation.
These include optimizing strategies to improve the business environment, boosting domestic resource mobilization, increasing public investments in transformative infrastructure and accessing de-risking instruments.
Ghana’s Ministry of Finance (MoF) is organising this event as the first peer-to-peer convening, with technical support from the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET).
The seven Compact countries—Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Ethiopia, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal and Tunisia—will participate in the meeting.
Other observer countries expected to attend are Burkina Faso, Benin, Gambia, Guinea, Liberia and Togo.
Representatives of the African Development Bank, the World Bank and the IMF will share perspectives on the three Compact frameworks—macroeconomic, business and financial—and the roles they will play to support countries in implementation.
The meeting is also intended to provide an opportunity for the Finance Ministers to initiate a peer learning framework for countries to learn from each other, as they address common challenges and leverage the Compact for their growth agendas.
Ghana’s Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, said, “We are determined to put Ghana beyond aid, and this compact squarely fits into our broader agenda of increasing private sector investment to drive economic development on our continent.”
He added, “I look forward to welcoming my colleague Finance Ministers to this meeting, which presents us with the opportunity to make clear decisions on how to sustain a peer learning platform to deepen and sustain the CWA initiative.”
The CWA was launched following the 12-13 June G-20 Africa Partnership Conference in Berlin and the G20 Summit held from 7-8 July in Hamburg.
Initially seven countries agreed to participate in the CWA and additional countries are likely to join.
A Business Desk Report