Brighton Chiseva
MIDRAND-SOUTH AFRICA – The Kingdom of Morocco has vowed to contribute immensely towards ensuring Africa’s food security and strengthening bilateral trade with other African countries.
Speaking during the official opening of the Pan African Parliament Sixth ordinary session in Midrand, South Africa, the President of the House of Councillors in the Kingdom of Morocco Enaam Mayara said Morroco was ready to work with other African States for the development of the continent.
“We express from this platform our support for all serious parliamentary initiatives, which aims to strengthen institutional cooperation and joint thinking on ways to emerge from continental parliamentary cooperation models that keep pace with the bilateral and multilateral dynamics, especially in order to face the challenges related to food security, water scarcity, the growing dangers of terrorist groups, armed movements and militias, combating the exploitation of children in armed conflicts, clandestine migration and human trafficking, in addition to the challenges of digitization, the fourth industrial revolution, confronting climate change and other issues of common interest at the continental and regional level,” said Mayara
Mayara went on to say Morocco, which recently re-joined African Union, was happy to be in the AU family and contributing to its development and for being invited for the PAP session.
“I would like to extend my deep appreciation for participating in the opening session of the African Parliament, alongside all the components of our continental institutional family, and I would like to express my gratitude to the President of the African Parliament, my friend Chief Fortune Charumbira, for his honourable invitation,” said Mayara
He called on all member states to each contribute towards the development of the continent each in its own capacity.
“We are all called upon, based on our main role as representatives of the people in our countries, to build a continental parliamentary agenda capable of facing all challenges and accelerating the emergence of a continental model to ensure common development and achieve the aspirations of our nations for well-being, progress and prosperity,”
He also commended the organization of the current parliament session by the African Parliament under the title of “Accelerating the Implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA)”, which he said comes in perfect harmony with the theme of the African Union for the year 2023.
He said this will make the current session a “working session” and a main station for contributing to the success of the great continental economic process that aims to establish the largest free trade area in the world, with a continental market made up of about 1.3 billion people and a combined domestic product of about 3.4 trillion dollars.
“The processes of the implementation of the “African Continental Free Trade Area” are at the heart of the Kingdom of Morocco’s interests, given their importance in changing the continental development model, to become more productive and create opportunities for all. This important continental project will also enable the creation of a large number of job opportunities for the benefit of young people and save 30 million Africans out of extreme poverty and improve the income of 68 million people, while increasing continental wealth by 450 billion dollars,” he said.
He said Morocco was working to exchange experiences and best practices related to economic and development programmes, alongside the strengthening of the financial and banking systems of a large number of the continent’s countries.
“This enabled the increase in the total value of Morocco’s bilateral trade with African countries by 9.5 percent as an annual average, in parallel with the strengthening of Moroccan investments in Africa, which consist mainly of direct investments in sub-Saharan Africa, which made the kingdom of Morocco the first African investor in the African continent.
“My country’s determination to develop cooperation and solidarity with all African brothers is matched only by its similarity to the success of all the institutional projects that the African Union is working to implement, foremost of which is strengthening the role of the Pan-African Parliament as an actual expression of the continent’s slogan “One Voice, One Continent’,” he said.
