President Akufo-Addo is advocating for Ghana to withdraw a minimum of 30 percent of its public funds and assets held in foreign banks, citing the need to redirect resources towards African development.
He urged fellow African leaders to collectively make this decision, emphasizing the detrimental effects of keeping sovereign reserves abroad.
Speaking at the Presidential Dialogue on African Union Financial Institutions during the 37th African Union summit in Addis Ababa, he highlighted the importance of strengthening African multilateral institutions like the African Development Bank and Afreximbank.
Akufo-Addo’s proposal, though radical, aligns with efforts to establish an African Investment Bank, with Libya slated to host it following the unanimous decision of the AU.
“We’re all in agreement that the way the Global Financial architecture works at the moment, it doesn’t work in our favour and that there is a need to make some fundamental systemic reforms,” he said.
President Akufo-Addo added, “As it stands virtually all our countries we hold our reserves in foreign Banks attracting largely negative rates of Interest.
“We should decide that a minimum of 30% of the reserves of each one of us (African States) Sovereign reserves should be invested in the African multilateral institutions.
“I speak about the ADB, I speak of Afreximbank (African Export-Import Bank) which will strengthen their balance sheets and strengthen their capacity also to facilitate more and more resources for our development”.
The President premised his call on the lessons learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic in which many states had and continue to have challenges accessing development finance to implement economic recovery programs.
Although he admits that “It’s a relatively radical proposal” he argued that his call goes in tandem with the formation of an African Investment Bank.
The 37th Ordinary Session of the African Union Held in Addis Ababa Ethiopia adopted the decision that settle on Libya as the country that will host the African Investment Bank.
The African leaders grounded their unanimous decision on Libya’s posture efforts and vision aimed at strengthening the role of African finance as they called on member states that had not ratified the bank’s charter to expedite ratification after reviewing the distinguished efforts.
