Global business leader and group chief executive officer (CEO) of MTN, Africa’s largest mobile telecommunication giant, Ralph Mupita, will be speaking at the maiden Africa Prosperity Dialogues, which is being organised by the Africa Prosperity Network and its partners, including the African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat and the Government of Ghana, the host nation.

Dubbed the Kwahu Summit, the first of these annual dialogues will take place from 26 to 28 January, 2023. Focusing on intra-Africa trade, the Africa Prosperity Dialogues bring together Africa’s political and business leaders to plan and work together on the all-important single market, the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) project for the continent.

Watershed summit

Confirming his participation via a video message, Ralph Mupita said he was excited that a platform has been created to engage Africa's private sector properly in the process of Africa's economic integration.

MTN currently provides voice, data, fintech, digital, enterprise, wholesale and API services to more than 285 million customers in 19 markets on the continent. Digitilisation is seen as one of the fastest ways of achieving economic integration in Africa, the continent with the highest per capita use of mobile money for transactions.

MTN's group CEO, Mr Mupita, remarked that the entire globe is in a critical state and the African continent cannot afford to leave its destiny in the hands of the West or any other part of the world as has been the case for several decades.

The Africa Prosperity Dialogues (Kwahu Summit), according to Mr Mupita, promises to be a watershed moment for the African continent because it seeks to bring business and political leaders as well as policymakers and civil society organisations together at a sitting, to map out strategies to fast-track the development of the African continent.

“I think we are living in very interesting times and part of what we are picking up is the concept of a great reset. We are living in a geopolitical, socio-economic environment that we would not have imagined maybe even six months ago, let alone a year ago and so this is a time for us to reflect and say, how do we create the Africa that we want, the Africa that our forefathers wanted?

“The Africa Union came into being motivated by building an Africa that is self-sufficient but is at the same time integrated with the rest of the world. The power and strength of Africa lie in the enormous human potential that is in all of the countries that make up the continent, the enormous resource, the mineral wealth, and the talents of the people. We have to be purposeful in how we think about the next five to ten years and what can be achieved” Ralph Mupita said.

A.P. dialogues

The Africa Prosperity Dialogues are symbolically dubbed the Kwahu Summit because the Kwahus of Ghana, the host nation, represent entrepreneurialship and trade and are known to support each other excel in business. Kwahu is also the highest elevation of habitable lands in Ghana.

The organisers of the Kwahu Summit aims to support through enhanced intra-Africa trade, the elevation of Africa and her people to the highest summit of human living, dignity and prosperity.

“The [Kwahu Summit] I think has the potential to be a watershed summit. If we have business, government, civil society, policymakers committing to a path of action that will empower us to self-determine our own future as continent.

“The reality is that this continent has enormous potential and the potential just needs to be realized and it takes leadership, it takes believe and the desire for us as the people of the continent to say we want to move and progress, using the might and the strength of the resources that we have and most importantly the people that we have” he added.

The 2023 Africa Prosperity Dialogues is the first of what will be an annual event and being organised by the Africa Prosperity Network (APN) and its partners, which include the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat located in Ghana, the Presidency of the Republic of Ghana (the host nation of AfCFTA), the United Nations Development Programme (Africa), the Africa Prosperity Fund, the Ghana Investments Promotion Centre (GIPC), the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the Africa-America Institute.

Action on AfCFTA

The Kwahu Summit is a Pan-African economic platform which brings together the great minds and mights of Africa, both in Africa and the Diaspora, to think, plan and work together to expedite the implementation of the agreed initiatives within the AfCFTA and shape the Africa Agenda for Action.

The Summit will bring into practical focus the continent’s critical challenges and industrialisation priorities and advance aggressively the commercial and infrastructural interventions to achieve the vision of creating the largest single market in the world of some 1.4 billion Africans.

Summit venues

The business and policy leaders’ dialogues which will take place on 26 - 27 January 2023, will be held at the Safari Valley Resort, in Adukrom, on the Akuapem Mountain. On the 28 of January 2023, the Peduase Presidential Lodge in Aburi, Akuapem Mountain, will host the presidential and business executives’ dialogues.