Your Excellency,
I would like to extend my warmest greetings.
As you host the G20 Summit during this important period in the beautiful city of Buenos Aires, my administration wants to convey its support to the agenda centred on the future of work, infrastructure, gender, and a sustainable food future. I would also like to take this opportunity to share my thoughts on these issues and contribute to the Summit’s deliberations.
I appreciate your leadership and wish for the best of outcomes.
Sincerely,
Abiy Ahmed
Prime Minister, Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
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This year’s G20 Summit takes place at a time where global leaders need to reaffirm the commitment to design solutions and pursue a more inclusive growth. We need to work towards creating a just and equitable society. To this end, we need to effectively mobilize our untapped resources - most importantly our youth. We need to unleash their vast potential to achieve global peace and prosperity. I believe there is no better place than Africa that is endowed with immense opportunity to spur the next global economic growth phenomenon. Unfortunately, where we are today, it seems we are too far - our youth continue to flee their homes in search better life. We are saying no more.
To lessen the impacts of unemployment and migration, our continental platform, the African Union recently affirmed the decision to reform the Commission. The objective of the reform is to ensure the Commission is financially self-sufficient, streamlined and empowered to realize the AU 2063 vision. We want to lead our youth by example. We need to transform the lives of our youth by creating a conducive environment for self-employment which is the future of work.
Having said that, Africa’s bright future extends beyond the continent. Africa needs to take the extent and quality of its cooperation to deepen global partnerships. I believe the G20 COMPACT WITH AFRICA will play a significant role in accelerating our continental development objectives and move us beyond the focus on unemployment and migration towards a New Horizon of Hope. I am a firm believer that lasting reform comes from inside out and the spur of change emanates from within. In light of that, my administration is implementing far-reaching socio-economic and political reforms. We continue to improve our competitiveness and work towards attracting sustainable investments making the nation the leading manufacturing hub in Africa and realize middle-income status - epitome of the Ethiopia 2025 vision.
Our path to realizing our vision is guided by a commitment of fairness, sustainability and equitable development that is accessible to all. We are focused on enhancing private investment through a strong focus on leveraging FDI, fostering industrialization, and export diversification to engender fast job creation especially for women and youth. We have also embarked on one of the largest privatisation reforms in Africa and are working towards liberalizing the economy. To this end, we are adopting innovative ways to mobilize private sector to finance to spur growth. For instance, we are leveraging more sovereign wealth funds available for infrastructure and other investments in Africa. Moreover, we are mobilizing the diaspora community by leveraging fin-tech to reduce the transaction cost of remittances. We are promoting social innovation and digitalization as enablers of future development. Hence, we see the COMPACT WITH AFRICA as a unique opportunity for supporting targeted FDI from G20 countries and beyond. We are looking forward to attracting more investment through this platform and our commitment to collaborate with G20 remains very strong.
Finally, I would like to note that prosperity should not be measured only by global GDP only but also by progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals and how the least developed amongst us are improving. I am optimistic that the G20 Summit will make important progress in putting Africa’s growth agenda central to its final outcomes. I am optimistic that we can increase global stability and prosperity through continuous reforms at national, continental and international levels and through deepened global partnerships.
H.E Mauricio Macri
President of Argentina