News:
August 5, 2021
The Angolan President, His Excellency João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço has commended Ghana’s 8th Parliament and Speaker Rt. Hon Alban Sumana Bagbin as well as leadership of the House for being able to steer affairs of the House despite its unique nature.
He called for deeper cooperation between the two countries in building a formidable energy sector, parliamentary diplomacy and good governance.
In an address to the House on Tuesday, August 3, 202 said, “In the framework of my visit to Ghana, we have identified the fields in which our countries will implement cooperation activities, namely in oil and gas exploration, agro-livestock, tourism, culture and sectors from which we want to achieve mutually advantageous results with direct impact to improve the living conditions of our peoples”.
I am convinced that we can achieve the goals that I have alluded to by optimizing the use of the important continental mechanisms to leverage its resources and obtain tangible results within the framework of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), whose headquarters your country had been proudly honored to host, so as we can promote undertaking of investments and businesses to propel development.
We have now a democracy that regularly complies with its election’s cycles, with an acceptable extent of maturity, and which allows our National Assembly to address the country’s fundamental problems and concerns within a healthy and harmonious environment.
At the heart of the current political debate in Angola is the prompt Constitution amendment aimed at deepening democracy and make it more participatory and inclusive.”
He said in the course of this visit to Ghana, “I am encouraged by the desire to take a further step towards deepening our bilateral relations so that we can complement the results achieved with the visit by His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, in August 2019, during which we defined a framework under which we have established a set of initiatives and actions aimed at strengthening exchanges between our countries”
In reality, he noted that the two countries possess enormous resources of various kinds, and for that very reason, huge potential for them to explore much more areas of cooperation in which “we are strong, in order to build among us as Africans solid foundations on which we can make prospect for progress and development.”
According to him, having been a parliamentarian for nearly three decades in different positions within the Angolan Parliament, mandated by his party, he has a profound understanding of the important role played by Members of Parliament as guarantors of the interests of the Ghanaian people and democracy.
I am extremely proud to be among you, former colleagues, I believe that I have come across in the past in various parliamentary forums held in our continent and around the world.
“Your country is an unmistakable example of democratic maturity and political civility, cultivated over decades in which your people demonstrated, with the dignity that characterizes them, in the process of rescuing sovereignty and independence, a unique ability to lead their destinies in a domestic context of broad national harmony”
The president noted that the democratic milestones achieved by Ghana are also the result of commitment and patriotism of important figures in the nation, of which he would like to highlight Kwame Nkrumah, who became famous in Africa and in the world for his profound dedication to the cause of Africa’s liberation and for his Pan-Africanist vision, from which many of the ideas that guide our continent today derive in the pathway of its journey to assert itself as a respected space on our planet.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com