Promoting South-South cooperation
President John Mahama has completed a three-day visit to Kenya during which the two countries signed a total of seven agreements aimed at strengthening the bonds of friendship and co-operation between them.
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Two of the agreements centred on the development of partnerships in air services and trade, while the five others focused on tourism, agriculture, energy, oil and gas, information and communications technology and education.
Some aspects of the agreement include efforts to reduce the cost of doing business between the two countries, co-operation in tourism training, and the exchange of technical information in agriculture.
The two Presidents also discussed how Ghana and Kenya could serve as effective sub-regional aviation hubs in West and East Africa respectively.
The Daily Graphic finds this new level of co-operation between the two African countries commendable and worthy of emulation in view of the fact that it is a departure from the norm.
Ghana and other countries on the continent have over the years looked to international bodies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the European Union, and developed countries in the bid to restructure and give impetus to their economies.
We, have, thus looked beyond our continent in fashioning modalities that would help bring development within the context of our South-South Co-operation.
Whatever may have accounted for this should be on the back burner and the focus should now be on how to harness the strengths that we have as African nations and by so doing, help address the challenges that the continent is confronted with.
We believe that the problems that confront Africa can be best appreciated and addressed by Africans, if the leaders and their people pool their strengths and resources in a frank and open manner, devoid of suspicions and underhand dealings.
We cannot keep on looking to the developed countries and bodies to provide solutions for every challenge we encounter.
The African problem must be solved the African way and, therefore, this South-South Co-operation must be supported to succeed so as to provide an ample basis that collaboration between African countries could take the continent to new heights.
The Daily Graphic commends Presidents Mahama and Uhuru Kenyatta for such a move and hopes that other countries on the continent would engage in such collaboration.
No amount of foreign assistance will help to resolve the hydra-headed problem confronting the continent.
Africa as one market has huge potential that can be exploited by leaders who believe in trade instead of aid, since the overdependence syndrome will only deepen the continent’s woes.
The Daily Graphic thinks that the solution to our problems lies in African governments leveraging the potential of the continent’s markets and resources.
Africa has what it takes to move its people out of poverty, disease and squalor.