Ghanaian President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has launch a passionate appeal to the AU and his colleague heads of state to support the implementation of an Africa-wide mobile telephony interoperability system.
Addressing the 37th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State of the African Union (AU), today, Sunday, Akufo-Addo said urged the continental body to adopt the 2024 Africa Prosperity Dialogues (APD 2024) Compact Document and, specifically, work towards a continental interoperability network across all member states.
This, he stressed, would give a major boost to Africa’s efforts toward building the world’s largest single market through the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) by allowing tens of millions of Africans to buy and sell goods and services across borders in their local currencies.
President Akufo-Addo said Africa’s ambition to establish the world’s largest single market under AfCFTA would be greatly enhanced if the continent’s leaders collectively and aggressively embrace the digital economy and its available tools.
He said, “At the end of last month’s three-day Africa Prosperity Dialogues (APD) 2024, which I was happy to host at the Peduase Presidential Lodge in Aburi, Ghana, the participants signed up to the Peduase Compact, a document I am informed has been widely distributed here at this Summit.
“Allow me to focus on one very transformative and, at the same time, very doable item in the Compact, which if implemented can truly and meaningfully fast-track the inclusive realisation of the AfCFTA. This is the introduction of an Africa-wide mobile telephony interoperability,” President Akufo-Addo said.
“The participants at this year’s Africa Prosperity Dialogues were unanimous in agreeing that enabling interoperability to have a single pan-African payment system is the easiest, quickest, and most effective way to accelerate and deepen the single market project in Africa. It is a low-hanging fruit way of making AfCFTA immediately meaningful to tens of millions of people across Africa”, President Akufo-Addo added.
This is Akufo-Addo’s last AU Summit as head of state, as his tenure of office comes to an end on January 6, 2025.