Ghana reiterates commitment to regional integration

Ghana has reiterated its commitment to promoting sub-regional and regional integration; and urged neighbours and other sister African countries to commit resources – both human and financial to the effort.

Alhaji Mohammed Habib Tijani, a Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration said Ghana, from its independence era, had blazed the trail of Pan-Africanism, advocated and deployed energy and resources towards the political liberation of the African Continent for the integration of their economies.

“Africa has come of age, the 21st century presents for us fecund epoch for hoisting ourselves by our boot string to take advantage of lessons learnt and successes chalked elsewhere in efforts at integration to help us shed unenviable tag of poverty, squalor and illiteracy.”

Alhaji Tijani said this, on Tuesday in Accra at the opening of the Regional Integration Issues Forum (RIIF) 2019 Policy Dialogue on “Enhancing National Capacity for Regional and Continental Integration in Africa”.

Africa’s region-building and regional integration was originally linked with Pan-Africanism as an economic cum political tool for achieving political emancipation of the territories still under colonial domination.

It is now widely recognised as a necessary condition for the long term sustainable development of African countries.

It is anticipated that the RIIF 2019 Sentisation Forum would build confidence of participants and produce increased stakeholders interest and commitment to implement regional and continental integration agenda for national development.

The two-day meeting is being organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration in collaboration with the CRIA and the Africa Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF).

Alhaji Tijani said it had long been established that the arbitrary partitioning of Africa from which the existing states emerged would continue to retard the continent’s progress unless Africans transcend their artificial borders and pool their resources together for their common good.

He said the lack of political will to make the required sacrifices in other to achieve sustainable development was not only disappointing but had proved to be devastating.

“We must not allow ourselves to be held to ransom – from generation to generation - by deep historical wounds inflicted on this continent by the former colonial powers,” he said.

“The linguistic barriers, instability, poverty and bad governance are all symptoms of those wounds. We must summon the same will and courage with which our fathers and grandparents freed us from colonialism, to chart a new course of unity, solidarity and prosperity.”

He said the motivating factor for the formation of most regional and sub-regional organisations such as the ECOWAS and the AU, which Ghana belongs, played roles in their formation and continues to deploy tremendous efforts towards its development, must continue to serve the continent well.

The Deputy Minister said the integration initiative had been a very challenging ideal as most African states, historically had pursued the integration agenda motivated by political and national interests at the expense of trade and economic interests.

He said initiatives at integration were undermined by the individual national interest of member states which often are personal interests of the leaders.

“This is exacerbated by high implementation costs, human and institutional inadequacies of implementing agencies and unsustainable policies of tariff cuts as a result of custom duty waivers and associated loss of badly needed budgeted-for revenue,” he said.

He noted that despite these bottlenecks, it was an undisputed fact that Regional and Continental integration had some of the most fundamental qualities of transforming our fragmented and often unviable states into economic powerhouses capable of maintaining and sustaining the ever increasing populations they spawn.

Mrs Mary Chinery-Hesse, Chancellor, University of Ghana said there was a crucial need to enhance, national, regional and continental capacity to generate the skills set for the serious business of accelerating the African Union (AU) project in all its manifestation.

Professor SKB Asante, Executive Director, CRIA, said the Centre was created to address capacity constraints of Africa’s region-building and regional integration.

Prof Emmanue Nnadozie, Executive Secretary, ACBF, lauded Ghana for its tremendous support towards the Foundation, since its establishment.