In November last year, Ghana and the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group signed an agreement to host the bank’s Annual General Meetings in Accra this year.
On May 11, AfDB President, Dr Akinwumi A. Adesina, visited the country as part of the AfDB Group’s preparations for its 57th Annual General Meeting (AGM) and the 48th AGM of the African Development Fund (ADF) to take place from May 23 to 27, 2022.
The meeting, on the theme ‘Achieving climate resilience and just energy transition in Africa’ opened yesterday and currently going on.
In the first place, it is a great honour for the country because since the establishment of the AfDB in 1963, this is the first time Ghana is hosting its AGM.
Second, it is an opportunity for the country to seek certain special financial assistance in closed door interactions for projects that would advance its socio-economic development.
This should be easier than normally should be the case because as part of the AGM, there are, among other events, a Presidential Dialogue on the theme ‘Africa: Development challenges and opportunities’; and statutory sittings of the Board of Governors of the AfDB Group in closed sessions, where special lobbying by the host country must take place.
After all, the President of AfDB Group, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, in an
address yesterday, praised the country for judiciously using AfDB funds meant for projects, stressing, for example, that “Ghana used the funds very well. Monies that were to be used to do a three-tier interchange were stretched and used to do a four-tier interchange….”
Yesterday, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo formally opened the AGM and raised issues in his speech.
He, for example, raised the issues of Africa being saddled with abusive costs of borrowing on the international capital markets to the benefit of their European and North American countries; and the need to remove structural barriers to development on the continent.
Then he called on African countries to cut relations with multinational companies that evade taxes and engage in illegitimate commercial transactions.
Having not lost focus on the theme ‘Achieving climate resilience and just energy transition in Africa’, he stressed that Africa suffered the severest of the brunt of climate change even though it was responsible for less than 4 per cent of the causes of the change.
He said what was appalling was that in spite of its suffering, Africa received only US$6 billion out of the worldwide total of US$30 billion of climate adaptation finance.
It is worthy of note that the participating countries shared their climate change and energy transition challenges and discussed policy responses to collectively tackle the challenges and how to boost funding for climate adaptation as well as Africa’s need for increased investment and other forms of financing to accelerate climate adaptation efforts.
The Ghanaian Times is happy to note that President Akufo-Addo stressed the need for African leaders to collectively build the capacity of continental development banks to transition the continent towards becoming resilient.
This paper’s happiness in based on the fact that President Akufo-Addo has indirectly pointed out the fact that Africa’s problem can be resolved by its leaders and they only.
Over the years, African leaders, at all levels, political, corporate and even religious, have been concentrating on how to fill their pockets for their benefits and those of their families.
That is the reason there is corruption all over the place and that is also why African leaders mostly want to remain in power till their death or hand power to their family members and other cronies while majority of the people wallow in squalor, poverty and all manner of misery.
It is now time for African leaders to drop their bad leadership traits and mobilise resources to improve the lives of their peoples, while weaning themselves off the begging for stipends from Western countries and their cheating institutions.
