During the sixth edition of the Paris Peace Forum, which took place on November 10th, 2023, President of the Republic Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo addressed global leaders and urged them to prevent the progress of the West from happening at the expense of Africa and other impoverished regions.
He questioned the necessity for the prosperity of Europe, the West, and parts of Asia to be based on poverty in other parts of the world such as Africa.
He suggested living together in a world where everyone can live comfortably without anyone living in either extreme comfort or extreme poverty. He emphasized the need to address this challenge to the thinking and mindset of people in our generation.
The President asked if all of us could live together on this planet with relative ease. He pointed out that the resources of the world are abundant, and there is an unprecedented abundance of technology and wealth.
He proposed that development should not be restricted to certain parts of the world, but rather be a universal and global phenomenon.
During a recent speech, President Akufo-Addo suggested that achieving peace requires addressing long-standing economic inequalities.
He emphasized the need for a multiplicity of responses to the complex issues facing the world today but noted that at the heart of all these responses is a very simple, ancient issue: money.
Access to capital and funds is critical for the world’s development, and the President believes that multilateral institutions like the Bank and the Fund will play a key role in mobilizing the resources needed to achieve this goal. Ultimately, the President hopes to create a new arrangement that will enable us to leave a more constructive and better world to future generations.
The President has been discussing a wide range of issues including climate action where he defended the constrained position of Africa after being told that some of Africa’s most important resources can no longer be deployed for her development.
He said, “If, indeed, we are being told that these resources that have helped develop other parts of the world are no longer going to be available for our development, how then do we make the transition to the new source of power and development? That our oil, our gas resources which are there in abundance, can no longer be deployed because of its impact on climate change, is a critical issue we have to look at.”
Making a case for innovative, eco-friendly deployment of these resources in a concerted approach to the climate question, President Akufo-Addo indicated that, in respect to whatever reasons are being advanced for this move, the resources for African states, “are not just there, so we have to address the issue of financing the resources for the climate transition in our parts of the world. And even if it is going to be a just and equitable transition, some position has to be found for the manner in which we can then maximumly utilize the resources that we do have.”
