I congratulate you,
Mr. President, on your election to lead us through this seventy-seventh gathering of the General Assembly of the United Nations. I wish you the best of luck as you take on that onerous task at this most difficult period of the world.
As we would say in Ghana, our world is currently not in a good place. The World Bank observed last Thursday that the global economy was enduring its sharpest slowdown since 1970. Two years ago, our world came to a thundering halt, as we cowered from a health crisis triggered by a malicious unknown virus, leading to a devastating global economic pandemic. High budget deficits were no longer the concerns of developing nations alone. By 2021, coronavirus disease had pushed Africa into the worst recession in half a century. A slump in productivity and revenues, increased pressures on spending and spiralling public debt confronted us without relent.
As we grappled with these economic challenges, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine burst upon us, aggravating an already difficult situation. It is not just the dismay that we feel at seeing such deliberate devastation of cities and towns in Europe in the year 2022; we are feeling this war directly in our lives in Africa. Every bullet, every bomb, every shell that hits a target in Ukraine, hits our pockets and our economies in Africa.
The economic turmoil is global, with inflation as the number one enemy this year. It hit a 40-year high in the United States and the United Kingdom in recent months. There is record inflation in the euro zone.
Several African countries have inflation rates surging three to four times higher than what they were just two years ago. In Ghana, we are experiencing the highest inflation in 21 years. The high cost of food is hurting the poor, especially the urban poor, the most.
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. This has led to depreciating currencies and increased borrowing costs, meaning that we need to raise and spend more of our own currencies to service our foreign debts in United States dollars.
It has become clear, if ever there was any doubt, that the international financial structure is skewed significantly against developing and emerging economies such as Ghana’s. The avenues that are opened to powerful nations to enable them to take measures that would ease pressures on their economies are closed to small nations. To make matters worse, credit-rating agencies have been quick to downgrade economies in Africa, making it harder to service our debts. The tag of Africa as an investment risk is little more than, in substance, a self-fulfilling prophecy created by the prejudice of the international money markets, which denies us access to cheaper borrowing, pushing us deeper into debt.
The financial markets have been set up and operate on rules designed for the benefit of rich and powerful nations, and, during times of crisis, the facade of international cooperation under which they purport to operate disappears. These are the savage lessons that we have had to take in, as the world emerged from the grip of the coronavirus to face energy and food price hikes and a worldwide rise in the cost of living. The necessity for reform of the system is compelling.
I am a modest student of history, yet I would say it is doubtful that any generation of inhabitants of this earth has ever witnessed such a perfect storm of global economic chaos, a war with global consequences and an unwillingness or inability to find a consensus to deal with the catastrophe. It is under such circumstances that we have gathered under the theme: “A watershed moment: transformative solutions to interlocking challenges”.
The problems we face are indeed many and vary in level of importance, depending on where one is in the global order of things. Just last year, the focus was on energy transition. This year, it is about energy security, as Europe goes back to burning coal to replace Russian gas. Nevertheless, we do not have the luxury of being able to pick and choose which big problem to solve. None of them can wait. The economic turbulence requires urgent and immediate solution. The turmoil and insecurity in many parts of the world require urgent attention, and so does the need to tackle the problems posed by climate change. A watershed moment it is, indeed, and history will judge us harshly if we do not seize the opportunity to make the changes that will enable us to deal with the many problems we face.
A case in point is the destabilizing conflict in the Sahel. It might look to many today as a local conflict that affects only the countries in that region. We, in Ghana, know differently: we have watched in horror as the unrest has inexorably moved from the Sahel to the coastal countries of West Africa. All of Ghana’s neighbours have suffered terrorist attacks, and some have lost territorial space to the invading forces. Furthermore, the terrorist pressure has provided a pretext for the unhappy reappearance of military rule in 3 of the 15 members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), 2 of which have borne the brunt of the terrorist outrages in the region — Mali and Burkina Faso. It is a development we are determined to reverse, so that the ECOWAS space remains a democratic one.
All of us in the region are being forced to spend huge amounts of money on security. We should be spending this money on educating our young people and giving them skills, and on building much-needed roads, bridges, hospitals and other such infrastructure. Instead, we are spending this money to fight terrorists or to keep them from destabilizing our countries. This is a global problem, deserving the attention of the world community, for a global solution.
I am contributing to this debate on a date that has special significance for us in Ghana. The date of 21 September is the one on which we mark the birth of our first President, Mr. Kwame Nkrumah. He would have been 113 years old today, and it is worth recalling on this day the driving force of his political career, which was to contribute to the birth of a united Africa, that is, a United States of Africa.
We recognize today, more than ever before, the importance of the strength in unity of Africa, and we are working to shed the image of a helpless, hapless continent. There is a renewed commitment towards
inclusive and sustainable industrialization and economic integration, and the intensity of the challenges we face today is only matched, as never before, by the immensity of the opportunity before us. We, the current leaders of Africa, should be determined not to waste the crisis with which we are confronted.
Incidentally, the year 2022 is billed as Africa’s year to take action on food and nutrition development goals. We see the current geopolitical crisis as an opportunity to rely less on food imports from outside the continent and use our 60 per cent global share of arable lands better to increase food production. We have seen the devastating impact of relying on Russia and Ukraine for 70 per cent of our wheat consumption. We have enough land, enough water, enough gas and enough manpower to produce enough fertilizer, food and energy for ourselves and others.
But we also recognize that we cannot do it all by ourselves. Our message to the global investor community is therefore this: Africa is ready for business. Africa needs the global investor community, and that community needs Africa. It needs Africa because Africa is busily building the world’s largest single market, with 1.3 billion people. Soon we will have a customs union, and we will also soon have a continental payment system that will accelerate and facilitate trade among ourselves. Already, goods and services are flowing more freely across our artificial borders. Africa must be seen for what it is: the new frontier for manufacturing, technology and food production.
That is why six years ago, I launched in Ghana the successful policy of “One District, One Factory”, which is a policy that, with Government incentives, has directly seen, so far, some 125 factories being set up in various districts across the country, leveraging on each area’s competitive advantage. That is why, six years ago, my Government embarked on an aggressive policy of planting for food and jobs, which has helped our farmers increase their yields many times over. Indeed, we are recognizing that many of the things we import can be found or produced in Ghana or in other African countries.
The African Continental Free Trade Area, whose secretariat is located in Accra, Ghana’s capital, is driving intra-African trade and creating an unparalleled momentum for our continent’s economic diversity and transformation. We know that industrialization is the way to go and, with the single market as the added incentive, we have taken policy measures in Ghana to add value to our natural resources. For example, we are processing more of our cocoa and refining more of our gold, and we are determined to exploit the entire value chain of our huge lithium deposits. We are busily building an integrated bauxite and aluminium industry and an integrated iron and steel industry. We are also building new oil refineries and have, so far, attracted six of the world’s largest automobile manufacturers to set up assembling plants in Ghana, prior to producing them in the country.
In line with the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Africa’s ambition is, anchored in the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme and the Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods, to transform our food systems over the next decade. What we require now is support from the investor community for the rolling out of Africa’s lucrative agro-industry and for that community to see agribusiness in Africa as much more an opportunity than the perceived exaggerated risk, which has been the false but dominant narrative.
In conclusion, on 25 July 2016, the General Assembly adopted resolution 70/293, proclaiming 2016-2025 as the Third Industrial Development Decade for Africa, with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization charged with the task of leading it in collaboration with a range of partners. I believe it is time for the United Nations to take proper stock of this initiative and ask a few searching questions, recognizing what could have been achieved with greater commitment and focus. Working together, we can get our world back into a better and happier place.