Infrastructure investments top agenda at 2025 African Prosperity Dialogues launch

On May 13, 2024, the 2025 edition of African Prosperity Dialogues (APD) was launched in Accra.

Speaking during the launch, the founder and executive chairman of the African Prosperity Network (APN), Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, gave a background history on how the whole idea was born.

He revealed that, on January 1, 2021, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) was born, which was arguably the single momental practical positive step towards integration by African political leaders since the formation of the OAU in May 1963.

He said political leaders across Africa had readily embraced the AfCFTA because their vision towards achieving shared and sustainable prosperity had aligned with it.

He said, “The objective of the APN, though it looked simple, wasn’t that simple. The task is that they do it here in Africa, the world’s largest single market of 55 nations, but doing so requires a collectively sincere kind of sustained commitment from all sides.”

He therefore emphasised the need for African political leaders, institutions, development partners, and business champions, including SMEs, non-Africans, and global Africans, to facilitate the APD dialogue.

According to him, the APN, which mobilises decision-makers to build urgency for a dynamic economic system facilitating free, productive mobility across member states, focuses on private sector operators as important drivers of Africa’s economic integration.

“The African Prosperity Network believes that the most important vehicle drivers of Africa’s economic integration are the continent’s private sector operatives and that the APN was set up deliberately and proactively to help mobilise, aggregate, and engage Africa decision makers in the whole process of creating rigorous urgency for a vibrant economic ecosystem that enables free and productive movements of people, goods, and services across member states.”

“It is because of this that we created the Africa Prosperity Dialogue in 2022, a unique dedicated platform where political business and top leaders can understand each other’s responsibilities and interests and work together on the things that need priority attention for deepening intra-African trade and investment,” he said.

Mr. Otchere-Darko noted that the Peduase compact, which came out of APD 2024, was formally tabled at the AU Heads of State Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, last February, adding that a key compact item was the need for a continent-wide interoperability system to be put in place.

He said there is therefore no debate that achieving interoperability across payment systems in Africa will make the single market concept meaningful in terms of the millions of ordinary traders in Africa, the majority of whom are women.

He further highlighted that the private sector is crucial to the success of the AfCFTA, and the APN and its partners, including financial institutions, are committed to mobilising private capital for development.

Other speakers, including the Finance Minister, Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam, and the High Commissioner of Rwanda to Ghana, Rosemary Mbabazi, underscored the need for a more development-oriented financing arrangement for African economies and investment in infrastructure in order to realise the vision of the AfCFTA.

APN Chairman Othere-Darko announced the 2025 APD will be held in Accra at the main auditorium of the Accra International Conference Centre (AICC) from January 30th to February 1st, 2025. 

The African Prosperity Champions Awards, however, will crown the three-day event at the grand arena of the AICC, according to him.