UK-Africa Summit must create beneficial partnerships

With political and business leaders gathering in London yesterday to discuss the next step in the relations between Africa and the United Kingdom, expectations are high around the continent in particular on the outcome of the summit.

The historic one-day summit comes at a time when the UK’s influence in a region it once heavily dominated is on the wane.

The summit also comes at a time Britain's exit from the European Union on January 31, 2020 creates an imperative for the UK to forge a new set of international alliances and trading arrangements.

At the summit yesterday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson sought to demonstrate the UK’s ambitions by delivering the principal address himself.

Ghana was represented by a high-powered delegation, led by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to make a case for attracting mutually beneficial UK investment into Ghana.

The summit brought together, for the first time, UK and African leaders, businesses and entrepreneurs, along with international finance institutions, to showcase new partnerships that create jobs and boost mutual prosperity.

The Daily Graphic welcomes the appropriateness and timing of the summit to deliver tangibles in terms of business and investment.

We also expect our leaders to make a strong case for the importance of securing sustainable finance for Africa’s infrastructure, discuss investment opportunities and how Africa and the UK can mobilise future partnerships that meet the needs of modern African nations.

It is on this basis that we consider the resolve of Ghana and the United Kingdom to deepen the bilateral relations that exist between them, as well as explore other areas of interest which will inure to the mutual benefit of the two countries and their respective populations, as being in the right direction.

On the sidelines of the UK-Africa Investment Summit, the British Government also pledged its willingnes to work with Ghana on the basis of trade and investment co-operation, and move away from the traditional aid-based relationship.

Already in Ghana, UK firms are the major investors, bringing state-of-the-art technology and supporting thousands of skilled jobs for Ghanaians. In the last 20 years, the UK has given over £2 billion in aid to Ghana to support our budget and other critical infrastructure needs of the economy.

But the UK government has now acknowledged the changing nature of its aid to Ghana and reviewed its aid in the light of Ghana’s attainment of a lower middle-income status in 2010.

Since 2012, the UK’s portfolio assistance to Ghana has been reoriented towards helping the country to overcome its economic and governance challenges and mobilise the resources to finance its own development.

However, development challenges, especially in addressing the infrastructure deficit in Ghana, suggest there is still a role for the UK to play in delivering better human development outcomes and protecting the results of past assistance.

This can be done through better terms of trade and investment that will wean Ghana off aid.

It is our expectation that the UK-Africa Investment Summit will create new mutually beneficial partnerships that move Ghana – and Africa – beyond aid by attracting quality investment to drive growth and create jobs.

This is because many of such investment summits with other advanced blocs had been held in the past with little or no results to show for the huge expectations.

In November 2006, there was the Chinese-African Summit in Beijing, followed by the European Union Summit in Lisbon in November 2007 with some African leaders, while in April 2008, India held an African Summit in Delhi. In May of the same year, the Japanese laid on a welcome in Tokyo, all with hugh promise but little to show for.

For emphasis, what Ghana, and for that matter Africa, needs most from the advanced world are trade and investment, boosted by technology transfer, agri-processing and financial services in order to shift away from the handouts that have not delivered the tangibles.

As we look into the future, our priorities should create an even closer partnership between Ghana and other economic giants to be the investment partner of choice for years to come.