President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has stressed that the African continent has to continue its efforts to mobilize financial resources in priority areas, especially infrastructure development, within the framework of the African Infrastructure Development Program.
This came in his speech before the 5th mid-year coordination summit of the African Union (AU) hosted by Kenya on “continental integration plans”.
Al-Sisi highlighted the important projects that would enhance the role of the industrial sector in African countries, including the navigational link between the Mediterranean Sea and Lake Victoria, and the land road linking Cairo and Cape Town, which aim to engage Africa in global value-added chains.
In this context, he called for the adoption of the proposal of the NEPAD secretariat to launch the “Africa team to mobilize resources” initiative to identify the financing needs of the continent of Africa. AL-Sisi reviewed the most prominent Egyptian priorities of the NEPAD presidency over the next two years, calling for the need to move forward in mobilizing the necessary resources for the tripartite link between peace, security, and development.
This programme shares its priorities and goals with the file of post-conflict reconstruction and development, whose leadership was supervised at the level of the African continent. He also called for the speedy completion of the second ten-year plan for the implementation of the African Development Agenda (2024-2034), taking into account the lessons learned from the implementation of the first ten-year plan and the challenges we faced. He stressed the need to draft it in full coordination with the regional economic groupings, so that it is a comprehensive document that can be used to assess the extent of the continent’s achievement of the goals of the ten-year development agenda until 2034. President Al-Sisi stressed the importance of intensifying efforts with international partners and financing organizations to find effective solutions to address the accumulated debt crisis, including through the development of debt relief mechanisms, through forgiveness, swap or concessional repayment. This is in addition to the proposals related to the governance of the global financial system, in a way that takes into account the needs of the developing country to a greater extent. The president called for speeding up towards achieving the targeted hopes of the Continental Free Trade Agreement, praising in this context the effort made by the agency in launching the initiative of 100 thousand small and medium-sized companies to support the ability of these companies to integrate into cross-border trade. He added that ” Egypt has set specific goals during its presidency of the NEPAD, based on pushing the rates of economic integration and proposing solutions to meet existing challenges, which are priorities that will be implemented through coordination with the NEPAD Secretariat, and through continuous consultation with African countries, in order to accelerate the implementation of the African Development Agenda 2063. This is done by taking advantage of Egyptian expertise and capabilities, including private sector companies in the fields of infrastructure, energy and telecommunications.” He stressed that Egypt is fully ready to provide the necessary support to the brotherly African countries in their development path.. “Egypt is ready to work with all effort and sincerity to deepen economic integration between the countries of the region and push the rates of development in our countries, thus contributing to raising the standard of living of our peoples,” Al-Sisi concluded.
In his speech to the session on Environment, Climate Change and the blue economy, the president reviewed Egypt’s vision to deal with the challenges of climate change. President Al-Sisi stressed the importance of providing the necessary environment for the rapid implementation of projects and programs to reduce carbon emissions and facilitate access to renewable energy. He stressed the need to focus on the principles of justice and fairness, taking into account the required transformation in the economic and social dimensions, and effectively dealing with the challenge of indebtedness and the high cost of financing, including resorting to innovative solutions such as debt exchange mechanisms, reviewing and writing off additional fees and interest. The president expressed his aspiration to cooperate with all countries so that African countries and developing countries continue to direct the international agenda towards strengthening international cooperation in facing the existential challenge posed by climate change.
He pointed out that the upcoming climate summit in the United Arab Emirates will be a concrete step in the fair and just path to protect the planet from the catastrophic consequences of climate change. The president praised the African participation in the “COP27 summit” in Sharm El-Sheikh, which reflected the commitment of our African countries to multilateral action to address climate change, within the framework of this important item, which addresses the link between climate change and the opportunities and challenges it poses to the axis of regional integration. For his part, Kenyan President William Ruto praised Al-Sisi’s chairmanship of NEPAD, which made it achieve remarkable achievements, especially Agenda 2063 with regard to regional and continental integration. Speaking at the African Union’s Mid-Year Coordination Summit, Ruto also thanked President Al-Sisi for successfully hosting the COP27 summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, which brought back to the world a fruitful African voice and contributed to solving the most existential challenge to the human perspective of climate change.
