Mrs. Nadia FETTAH, co-chair of the Board of Directors of Africa50, took part Tuesday, July 19th 2022, in the work of the General Assembly of its Shareholders 2022, held in Marrakech, under the High Patronage of His Majesty King Mohammed VI, around the theme “Accelerated and resilient recovery”.
In her speech, the Minister said that the pan-African infrastructure investment platform “Africa50” is called to play its full role as a catalyst for investment and a driving force for Africa's development. She added that “with the support of its shareholders and international institutions working in this direction, Africa50 is called upon to play its full role as a pathfinder, a catalyst for investment and a driving force for Africa's development”.
She also noted that the challenge remains “immense, but there is hope because it is clear that we will never be able to build the prosperous and just world that we all wish for, without Africa”. The Minister emphasized that the realization of priority projects for Africa, in the context of the post-Covid recovery, requires the mobilization of significant resources that cannot be provided solely by States.
Given the magnitude of the projects to be carried out, public finances alone will not be able to finance the development of the continent, especially that they have been greatly weakened by the crisis related to the Covid-19, she added. She held that it is fundamental to appeal to private capital, at the national and international level in particular, to meet these African challenges and to include the financing approach in a public-private partnership logic.
In this regard, the Minister called for strengthening the agility of African economies to meet the challenges of sustainable and inclusive development through strong and sustained support for priority sectors, particularly in the field of infrastructure.
Therefore, African countries, like Morocco, have significant infrastructure needs. Moreover, and in accordance with Agenda 2063, Africa aims to establish world-class infrastructure to promote the connectivity of the continent, she said. She added that these investments would be all the more important as the current world is experiencing major changes in the restructuring of global value chains.
In this respect, the Minister recalled that for Morocco, the vision of cooperation with other African countries does not date from today. On the contrary, it has been brought to the highest level by His Majesty King Mohammed VI for several years.
She went on to say that the strengthening of economic cooperation has resulted in the intensification of trade and investment flows. The Minister added that significant investments have been made by several Moroccan companies operating in various sectors: banking, insurance, telecommunications, construction, energy, agriculture ..., to make the Kingdom one of the major African investors in the Continent.
The Africa50 shareholders' meeting was attended by several African finance ministers and other government officials, as well as heads of institutions, diplomats and business leaders from Morocco, Africa and elsewhere. As a reminder, Africa50 is an investment platform created by African heads of State and the ADB. Its mandate is to develop and invest in high-impact infrastructure projects in terms of development, through the mobilization of public and private funds, while offering an attractive return to investors.