Ghana to host AfCFTA Confab
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Ghana is scheduled to hold a maiden national conference on the implementation of the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement, AfCFTA.
Ghanaian President, Nana Akufo-Addo is to open the three-day conference on Monday, August 19, 2019, in Accra.
The President is expected to use the occasion to spell out Ghana’s vision for the AfCFTA for a Ghana Beyond Aid.
The Conference seeks to among other things, bring together key stakeholders to discuss national strategies and programme interventions to ensure the harnessing of benefits from AfCFTA.
Participants are expected to include Senior Policy Makers, Parliamentarians, the Business Community, Academia, Representatives of Civil Society Organizations, Development Partners and the Media from Ghana and Beyond.
It would be recalled that the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union (AU) selected Ghana as the host country for the Secretariat in July at the 12th AU Extraordinary Summit held in Niamey, the capital of Niger.
The Secretariat is mandated to implement the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement, which has since been ratified by 25 member states.
Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, made this known to the media on Sunday, August 18, 2019, in Accra.
According to him, the theme is “harnessing the benefits of the African Continental Free Trade Area for a Ghana Beyond Aid”.
He told journalists that some benefits expected to be derived from implementing the AfCFTA include
Increase intra-African trade through better harmonization and coordination of trade within the African continent and addressing the challenge of small fragmented markets in Africa by creating a single continental market which will lead to economies of scale.
It will also add value to Africa’s abundant natural resources and promote economic diversification and industrialization and develop regional value chains and facilitate cross border investments in Africa, he said.
By Melvin Talue
ABOUT: Nana Kwesi Coomson
[email protected] An Entrepreneur, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Communications Executive and Philanthropist. Editor-in-Chief of www.233times.com. A Senior Journalist with Ghanaian Chronicle Newspaper. An alumnus of Adisadel College where he read General Arts. His first degree is in Bachelor of Arts - Political Science (major) and History (minor) from the University of Ghana. He holds MSc in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Energy with Public Relations (PR) from the Robert Gordon University in the United Kingdom. He is a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow who studied at Clark Atlanta University in USA on the Business and Entrepreneurship track.
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