Finance Ministers from some African Countries have converged at the Movenpick Ambassador Hotel in Accra to hold the first Compact with Africa ministerial meeting.

Compact with Africa was launched after the 12-13 June G20 Africa Partnership Conference in Berlin and the G20 Summit of 7-8 July in Hamburg to support African Compact countries improve their macroeconomic, business and financial frameworks for attracting private investment.

It also seeks to strengthen their public sector financial and debt management; and to encourage private investment from G20 countries.

Vice President of Ghana, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia speaking at the opening ceremony of the meeting said the Compact was an opportunity for African countries to work together and resolve their common challenges.

He explained that “While each of the Compact with Africa countries face specific challenges and are at different paces of development, the Compact with Africa also reinforces that in many respect we face common challenges and that it makes sense for us to learn from each other.”

Dr Bawumia said Africa must consider a future without aid as the aid landscape continues to shift.

He said, “Aid flows from traditional donors are dwindling across Africa. This surely means that we must begin to contemplate a future beyond aid and also a future with enhanced productive capacity with a robust private sector and one where our infrastructure gaps are met”.

Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta stated that CWA was an opportunity African Countries must seize to learn from each other.

“I also hope we can make some clear decisions on how to build and sustain a peer learning platform to deepen and sustain the progress we would have made today in making the CWA work for us”.

The objective of the meeting is to express commitment and support for the Compact agenda; to provide a stocktaking of progress to date; and to outline next steps, including a peer learning framework to address common challenges over the next three years.

Ghana, Ethiopia, Cote d’Ivoire, Tunisia, Rwanda, Morocco and Senegal are the seven countries currently form the Compact countries.