Listen to Kofi Annan- Make This Year’s G20 another Gleneagles Moment

Former United Nations Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, who is also the Chair of the Africa Progress Panel , in an article dated 2nd November, 2011, has called on French President Nicholas Sarkozy, host of the 2011 Cannes G20 Summit, and all participants of the Summit to make it “another G20’s Gleneagles moment.”

Mr Annan argues that this year’s G20 Summit could be used to “restore a much-needed sense of purpose to the G20” especially “when its post-crisis role and effectiveness as a global decision-making body has been called to doubt.”

He also asserts that the Summit “could also help restore a measure of trust in the goodwill of the world’s richest countries, something that many in the developing world have come to doubt in light of stalled trade and climate-change negotiations, declining aid flows and a painful economic crisis.”

Mr Annan emphasized that “as a group” G20 “has the composition, reach and sheer economic prowess” to help Africa succeed, “if they are to continue succeeding themselves.” And in this respect, the Summit should forge an effective consensus on how the G20 can help reform the structural barriers to Africa’s growth and prosperity- high tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade, distorting quotas and bloated subsidy regimes. Gleneagles made the point that help for Africa was not an act of charity but a process which guaranteed the mutual self interest of both the developed economies and Africa’s developing economies.

For us in the New Patriotic Party (NPP), these are some of the important issues to which the leading economies of the world should be paying urgent attention. Let the Summit listen to Kofi Annan.

Let us hope that the outcome of the Summit will be to the broader benefit of all humanity.

Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo

NPP 2012 Presidential Candidate