Source: newsthemegh.com
During the most recent summit of the African Union (AU), President Akufo-Addo made a strong plea to other heads of state in Africa to back the establishment of an interoperable mobile phone network across the continent.
President Akufo-Addo made a call for the adoption of the 2024 Africa Prosperity Dialogues (APD 2024) Compact Document, particularly the adoption of a continental interoperability network spanning all member states, yesterday during his speech to the 37th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State of the African Union (AU).
He emphasised that this would enable millions of Africans to transact cross-border in their local currencies for goods and services, significantly bolstering Africa’s efforts to establish the continent as the global center of the single market.
President Akufo-Addo said that leaders on the continent should adopt a “collective, aggressive embrace of the digital economy and its available tools” in order to greatly advance Africa’s ambition to become the world’s largest single market under the AfCFTA. He made this statement to his fellow leaders in the Nelson Mandela Plenary Hall at the AU head office in Addis Ababa.
“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.” he said.
This marks the beginning of mobile phone interoperability throughout Africa.
“The participants in 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.