Following the 12-13 June G20 Africa Partnership Conference in Berlin and the G20 Summit of 7-8 July in Hamburg, the G20 Compact with Africa (CWA) has been launched. Initially seven countries have agreed to participate in the CWA and additional countries will likely join. The CWA seeks to support African Compact countries to improve their macroeconomic, business, and financial frameworks for attracting private investment and to strengthen their public sector financial and debt management; and to encourage private investment from G20 countries. The CWA is central to the economic transformation agenda related to these three pillars.
The Ministers of Finance of the CWA countries met on September 6, 2017 in Accra. The objectives of the meeting were to express commitment and support to the Compact agenda, to provide stocktaking of progress to date, and to outline the next steps, including a peer learning framework to address common challenges over the next three years.
It will be important to ensure that the Compact with Africa translates into action on the ground and boosts private sector investment in each CWA country. The meeting addressed the critical role that the Compact can play in the collective economic transformation agendas of Africa and how to overcome some of the challenges in its implementation. Challenges exist in each of the three pillars of the Compact with Africa, whether the need to improve the business environment through standardization and improved incentives, or the need to improve domestic resource mobilization and public investments through investment friendly tax regimes and the allocation of public investment toward transformational goals. Other challenges could include the need to enhance financing through the creation of robust debt markets, or access to de-risking instruments. The meeting was an opportunity for Ministers of Finance to discuss how to leverage the Compact with Africa, ensure that a platform is in place to support it, and make it sustainable with enhanced private sector investment.
Download agenda below.
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