Ghanaian President, Nana Akufo-Addo, has bemoaned that prime costs of food are hurting poor people in his nation.
Mr. Akufo-Addo made this identified in his handle delivered on Wednesday, September 21, 2022, on the 77th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York, USA.
According to him, “Ghana, we are experiencing the highest inflation for 21 years. The high costs of food are hurting the poor, especially the urban poor, the most.”
He added that “Moreover, the spillover from central banks raising interest rates to combat inflation has been severe beyond borders, as global investors pull money out of developing economies to invest in bonds in the developed world.”
Below is Mr. Akufo-Addo’s full handle:
ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF GHANA, NANA ADDO DANKWA AKUFO-ADDO, AT THE 77TH SESSION OF THE UNITED NATIONS’ GENERAL ASSEMBLY, ON THE THEME “A WATERSHED MOMENT: TRANSFORMATIVE SOLUTIONS TO INTERLOCKING CHALLENGES”, ON WEDNESDAY, 21ST SEPTEMBER, 2019, NEW YORK.
Mr President, I congratulate you in your election to steer us by way of this 77th gathering of the General Assembly of the United Nations. I want you the very best of luck, as you tackle this onerous activity at this most tough interval of the world.
Mr President, as we’d say in Ghana, our world is at the moment not in an excellent place. The World Bank noticed, final Thursday, that the worldwide
economic system was enduring its steepest slowdown since 1970. Two years in the past, our world got here to a thundering halt, as we cowered from a well being
pandemic from an unknown, malicious virus, coupled with a devastating international financial pandemic. High funds deficits have been now not considerations of solely creating nations.
By 2021, COVID-19 had pushed Africa into the worst recession for half a century. A droop in productiveness and revenues, elevated pressures on spending and spiralling public money owed confronted us with out relent.
As we grappled with these financial challenges, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine burst upon us, aggravating an already tough state of affairs. It isn’t just the dismay that we really feel at seeing such deliberate devastation of cities and cities in Europe within the 12 months 2022, we are feeling this warfare straight in our lives in Africa. Every bullet, each bomb, each shell that hits a goal in Ukraine, hits our pockets and our economies in Africa.
The financial turmoil is international with inflation because the primary enemy this 12 months. It hit a 40-12 months-excessive within the US and UK in latest months. There is file inflation within the euro zone. Several African international locations have inflation charges surging three to 4 instances larger than what they have been simply two years in the past. In Ghana, we are experiencing the best inflation for 21 years. The excessive costs of food are hurting the poor, particularly the city poor, probably the most.
Moreover, the spillover from central banks elevating rates of interest to fight inflation has been extreme past borders, as international traders pull cash out of creating economies to put money into bonds within the developed world.
This has led to depreciating currencies and elevated borrowing costs; which means we have to increase and spend extra of our personal currencies to
service our international money owed in US {dollars}.
It has turn out to be clear, if ever there was any doubt, that the worldwide monetary construction is skewed considerably in opposition to creating and
rising economies like Ghana. The avenues that are opened to highly effective nations to allow them take measures that will ease pressures on their economies are closed to small nations. To make issues worse, credit standing businesses have been fast to downgrade economies in Africa, making it tougher to service our money owed. The tag of Africa as an funding threat is little greater than, in substance, a self-fulfilling prophecy created by the unfairness of the worldwide cash market, which denies us entry to cheaper borrowing, pushing us deeper into money owed.
The monetary markets have been arrange and function on guidelines designed for the profit of wealthy and highly effective nations, and, throughout instances of disaster, the façade of worldwide co-operation, beneath which they purport to function, disappears. These are the savage classes that we now have had to absorb, because the world emerged from the grip of the coronavirus to power and food worth hikes, and a worldwide rise in the fee of dwelling. The necessity for reform of the system is compelling.
Mr President, I’m a modest scholar of historical past, and I might say it’s uncertain that any technology of inhabitants of this earth has ever
witnessed such an ideal storm of international financial chaos, a warfare with international penalties, and an unwillingness or lack of ability to discover a consensus to take care of the disaster.
It is beneath such circumstances that we now have gathered beneath the theme: “A Watershed Moment: Transformative Solutions to Interlocking
Challenges.”
The issues we face are, certainly, many, and differ in degree of significance, relying on the place you are within the international order of issues. Just final 12 months, the main focus was on power transition. This 12 months, it’s about power safety, as Europe goes again to burning coal to switch Russian gasoline.
Nevertheless, we don’t have the posh of with the ability to choose and select which large drawback to unravel. None of them can wait; the financial turbulence requires pressing and quick answer; the turmoil and insecurity in lots of components of the world require pressing consideration; and so does the necessity to deal with the issues posed by local weather change.
A watershed second, certainly, it’s, and historical past will decide us harshly if we don’t seize the chance to make the adjustments that may allow us take care of the various issues we face.
Mr President, a working example is the destabilising battle within the Sahel. It may look to many, right this moment, as a neighborhood battle which impacts solely the
international locations in that area. We, in Ghana, know otherwise, we now have watched in horror because the unrest has moved from the Sahel, inexorably, to the West African coastal international locations. All of Ghana’s neighbours have suffered terrorist assaults, and a few have misplaced territorial house to the invading forces.
Furthermore, the terrorist stress has offered a pretext for the sad reappearance of army rule in three (3) of the fifteen (15)
member ECOWAS Community, two (2) of whom have borne the brunt of the terrorist outrages within the Region – Mali and Burkina Faso. It is a
growth we are decided to reverse, in order that the ECOWAS house stays a democratic one.
All of us within the Region are being compelled to spend big quantities of cash on safety. This is cash we must be spending on educating and giving expertise to our younger people; on constructing a lot wanted roads, bridges, hospitals and different such infrastructure, which we are spending to struggle terrorists or to maintain them out from destabilising our international locations.
This is a world drawback, deserving the eye of the world group for a world answer. Mr President, I’m contributing to this debate on a date that has particular significance for us in Ghana. twenty first September is the date we mark the beginning of our first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah.
He would have been 100 and 13 (113) years previous right this moment, and it’s value recalling on at the present time the driving pressure of his political profession, which was to contribute to the beginning of a united Africa, i.e., a United States of Africa.
We recognise right this moment, greater than ever earlier than, the significance of the energy in unity of Africa, and we are working to shed that picture of a
helpless, hapless continent.
There is a renewed dedication in the direction of an inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and financial integration and the depth of the
challenges we face right this moment is just matched, like by no means earlier than, by the immensity of the chance earlier than us. We, the present leaders of Africa,
must be decided to not waste the disaster that confronts us.
Incidentally, 2022 is billed as Africa’s Year to take motion on food and diet growth targets. We see the present geopolitical disaster as a chance to rely much less on food imports from exterior the continent and use higher our sixty per cent international share of arable lands to extend food manufacturing.
We have seen the devastating impression of counting on Russia and Ukraine for seventy per cent of our wheat consumption. We have sufficient
land, sufficient water, sufficient gasoline and sufficient manpower to provide sufficient fertiliser, food and power for ourselves and for others.
But, we additionally recognise that we can not do all of it by ourselves. Our message to the worldwide investor group is, due to this fact, this: Africa is prepared for enterprise. Africa wants you and also you want Africa. You want Africa as a result of Africa is busily constructing the world’s largest single market of 1.3 billion people.
Soon we can have a customs union, and shortly we can have a continental cost system that may speed up and facilitate commerce amongst ourselves. Already, items and companies are flowing extra freely throughout our synthetic borders. See Africa for what it’s: the brand new frontier for
manufacturing, for know-how, for food manufacturing. That is why six years in the past, I launched in Ghana the profitable coverage of ‘One District One Factory’.
A coverage, with authorities incentives, that has straight seen, to this point, some 100 and twenty-5 (125) factories being arrange in varied districts throughout the nation, leveraging on every space’s aggressive benefit. That is why, six years in the past, my authorities launched into an aggressive coverage of planting for food and jobs, which has helped our farmers enhance their yields in folds. Indeed, we are recognising that many of the issues we import will be discovered or produced in Ghana, or in different African international locations.
The African Continental Free Trade Area, whose Secretariat is situated in Accra, Ghana’s capital, is driving intra-Africa commerce and creating an unparalleled momentum for our continent’s financial variety and transformation. We know that industrialisation is the best way to go and, with the one market because the added incentive, we now have taken coverage measures in Ghana so as to add worth to our pure assets. For instance, we are processing extra of our cocoa, refining extra of our gold, and we are decided to use your complete worth chain of our big lithium deposits.
We are busily constructing an built-in bauxite and aluminium business and an built-in iron and metal business, constructing new oil refineries and have, to this point, attracted six (6) of the world’s greatest vehicle producers to arrange assembling vegetation in Ghana, previous to producing them within the nation.
In line with the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Africa’s ambition is to rework our food techniques over the following decade, anchored within the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) and the Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth.
What we require now could be help from the investor group for the rolling out of Africa’s profitable agro-business, and for the group to see agribusiness in Africa as rather more a chance than the perceived, exaggerated threat which has been the false, however dominant narrative.
In conclusion, Mr President, on 25 July 2016, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution A/RES/70/293, proclaiming 2016-2025 because the Third Industrial Development Decade for Africa (IDDA III), with UNIDO tasked to steer it in collaboration with a spread of companions.
I imagine it’s time for the UN to take correct inventory of this initiative and ask just a few looking out questions, recognising what might have been achieved with larger dedication and focus.
Working collectively, we are able to get our world again into a greater and happier place.
I thanks very a lot on your consideration.
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