African Union calls for continental integration at mid-year coordination meeting

African Union calls for continental integration in biannual coordination meeting Accra, July 22 (IANS) The African Union (AU) opened its sixth biannual coordination meeting in Accra, the capital of Ghana, calling for peace and solidarity on the continent. The meeting, themed ‘Educate and Skill Africa for the 21st Century’, brought together the AU, Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and AU member states, among others, Xinhua news agency reported. In his remarks, AU Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat highlighted the role played by the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in promoting integration on the continent. “The AfCFTA is bound to become a lever that catalyses structural reforms that will in turn facilitate wealth creation, through the improvement of economic governance, mobilisation of finance and human capital,” Faki said. The Chair further called on African countries to maximise the potential of the AfCFTA to make it an engine of growth and diversification of economies to increase trade within the continent. Ghanaian President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, who opened the meeting, said that some regions in Africa are still plagued by conflict, instability and violence that hamper development and pose a threat to broader continental security. The President therefore called on his African counterparts to work hard to find solutions to a host of conflicts on the continent. The AU introduced its biannual coordination meeting in 2017 as the main forum to align the work of the AU and RECs and coordinate the implementation of the continental integration agenda.