The Secretariat of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States

Your Excellencies Heads of State and Governments,
Secretary-General of the ACP,
Members of the Council of State,
Honourable Ministers,
Members of Parliament,
Your Excellencies Members of the Diplomatic Corps,
Our Esteemed Traditional Rulers,
Distinguished Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a real joy to see so many of our ACP leaders turn up for this Summit.  It is my distinct honour to welcome all of you and your delegations to our capital, Accra.  I hope you will enjoy your short, albeit busy, stay with us.

Before I commence my address, I want to express appreciation to the speakers who took the floor before me for their kind words for Ghana and my person.  Words of admiration and words of encouragement always serve as a great tonic for a person, people or even a state striving for greater heights.  Thank you.

To the outgoing, President of the ACP Summit, I want to extend my special thanks for holding the fort for the past two years and for the wonderful cooperation between the officials of our two countries which has contributed to the smooth arrangements for this Summit.  That cooperation, capped with your presence here today, is yet another manifestation of your commitment to our organization and I hope that in taking over the torch from you, Ghana will live up to the expectations of all ACP States in guiding the affairs of the organization for the next two years.

I also want to make special mention of the presence of officials of our main collaborator, the European Union.  We welcome the delegation and the EU’s determination to cooperate with the ACP states to our mutual benefit.

As we look forward into the future, the two sides of this partnership should seek new modalities by which they would facilitate their respective entry into WTO agreements competitively, profitably and with dignified interdependence.

Ghana is very happy to welcome other dignitaries from all over the world, including eminent statesmen, intellectuals and personalities from the private sector.  With this good audience, the ACP should seize the opportunity to make its case to the world.

It is a straight forward case, Ladies and Gentlemen.  The ACP countries are determined to empower their peoples to take advantage of the ever-increasing opportunities which would help them to integrate meaningfully into the world systems and impact positively on their development.  The ACP wants a better life for all its peoples.  Hence, the theme for this Summit “Promoting Human Security and Development”.

Human security and development should focus especially on the youth who should be nurtured into the mainstream of globalization with competence and self-confidence. The Summit and its partners should therefore deliberate on education, health care, communications and such other matters that impact on the orientation of people and societies for balanced outlooks.  This demands that the economies of member states are productive enough to support such social forces.  In turn, fair international trade systems should be in place to support such economies.

Unfortunately, this is not so.  It becomes clearer every day that many ACP member states are left to assume the responsibility of guaranteeing the security and well-being of their citizens and the development of their nations largely by themselves.  Donor assistance has not been substantial enough to complement our resources for institutional building and human resource development for transforming our nations.

Aid has tended to be given more as charity than an economic factor for development, and thus has not been substantial enough, coordinated or timeous to make the requisite dent on our problems of poverty, unemployment, high levels of illiteracy and disease.  These short comings combine to incapacitate us in our efforts to add value to our raw material production.

This great handicap which our economies suffer has not conduced to the growth of a vibrant private sector and entrepreneurship which are the sine qua non of productive market activity.  Capacity to attract foreign direct investment is therefore not much developed.  This state of affairs is well-known to our development partners who nonetheless display a great reluctance in contributing Aid, Technical Assistance and relaxation of their protective mechanism to allow our commodities access to their markets.

To be fair, we must acknowledge that in the past decade or so, the donor community has shown a stirring of conscience through the UN system, especially the multi-lateral institutions like the World Bank, the OECD and the G8.  Hence, the promise of 0.7% of their GDP to ODA, the implementation of which, to say the least, has been scratchy so far.

Your Excellencies, currently, international conferences at all levels are giving increasing attention to the challenge of support to developing countries.  It is this same awakening that led the UN to institute the Millennium Development Goals aimed at uplifting developing countries from extreme poverty, which many of us ACP countries are working assiduously to achieve.

But even before this evolving global effort, there have been partnerships with preferential treatment similar to the ACP and EU partnership.  These special relationships are now being subsumed under WTO agreements which somehow continue to be frustrated by the resistance of developed countries to the removal of subsidies on their agricultural produce thereby compromising the very basis of fair trade. 

Embarrassingly, some of our members have been caught, on the one hand, between the non-fulfillment of the DOHA Round which would have created a fairer trading system; and the resort to trading arrangements such as the EPAs with the EU, on the other, which tend to undermine our regional integration efforts. 

The EPAs divide the solidarity that used to bind the ACP countries together under the pretext of giving regional emphasis to the relationship between the EU and the six ACP regions.  They also threaten to deprive members that do not sign by giving deadlines which could prove catastrophic to our fragile economies.

Your Excellencies, at this Summit, we should deliberate upon how the EU takes our dilemma into consideration, so that together we can work towards an eventual realization of the WTO agreements, to our mutual satisfaction. The tying of Aid to Trade arrangements should help to nurture developing countries into stronger trading partners.

These are some of the challenges for the realization of the Summit’s theme – “Promoting Human Security and Development”.  Your Excellencies, may I therefore urge you to deliberate upon them and other issues dispassionately for all of us to begin to see light at the end of the tunnel.

Other urgent issues of equal importance for enhanced security for mankind are climate-change and its environmental consequences, the current financial crisis, turbulence in the crude oil market, soaring food prices and terrorism from whose negative impact nobody anywhere is exempt.  The search for solutions to these challenges should engage all of us.  If any doubted the reality of the advent of the global village, these challenges should convince us that it is here.  These challenges are the more reason why the ACP group which is spread over three of the world’s continents should pull together to help save humanity.  The problems of migration, racism and religious intolerance are equally engaging.

Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, come next January, I would have been in office as President of my country for two 4-year terms.  Preparations are already underway to conduct elections in December for the next President and a new Parliament. I have enjoyed the support of the good people of Ghana as well as the goodwill of the international community and for that, I am forever grateful.

My experience in the Presidency has confirmed to me that respect for human rights, democracy, the rule of law, coupled with free and fair elections are essential to good governance and the development of peace and security everywhere.

Your Excellencies, Ghana is honoured by the opportunity to host this important conference.  We are honoured all the more by the full attendance of all the 79 member states, and we appreciate it. 

At this juncture, allow me to express the appreciation of the entire ACP community to the current Secretary-General, Sir John Kaputin who has handled the affairs of the ACP Secretariat with dignity for the past four years.  His untiring role in the preparations of this Summit cannot be over-emphasized and as he also heads towards the end of his mandate, with this Summit as the last under his watch, I say on your behalf and on my own behalf, thank you. We wish you well.

Your Excellencies, I now have the honour to declare the 6^th ACP Summit open and wish you fruitful deliberations.

Thank you and may God bless us all.