President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has received a Medal of Merit in Leadership Award from the African Bar Association.
The award’s citation described President Akufo-Addo as “a pan Africanist, anti-corruption crusader, a rare democratic leader in the field of good governance, a true African Statesman whose legacies present African leaders must emulate, and we are minded to say will stand the test of time”.
At the African Bar Association’s 2023 Annual Conference in Pretoria, South Africa, Hannibal Egbe Uwaifo, the association’s president, presented President Akufo-Addo with the honor.
President Akufo-Addo thanked the association for the honor and said that lawyers enjoyed a unique status in African societies because of the profession’s rarified status.
He stated that being at the forefront of the fight against colonialism as lawyers was a source of pride, and that since independence, lawyers had seamlessly transitioned between politics and the legal profession.
“We must be defined by what we see in ourselves, and not what others choose to say about us.
However, this cannot happen if we do not trade amongst ourselves.
Africa accounts for only three per cent of global trade, and intra-African trade is one of the lowest of any region globally,” he said.
This, according to President Akufo-Addo, was largely caused by the “colonial” economic model that had been in place for the previous century and was characterized by small individual economies, fragmented and disconnected regional markets, an overreliance on the production and export of basic commodities, and the presence of low productive capacities.
According to him, the creation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) offered Africa a once-in-a-lifetime chance to strengthen intra-African trade as a potent means of realizing the continent’s enormous economic and material potential.
“As the adage goes, there is strength in unity, and, for all 54 member states of the African Union, our strength lies with our numbers.
Cumulatively, we have a population of 1.3 billion, the majority of whom are young people, and we are in possession of a collective gross domestic product (GDP) of $3 trillion, making us, collectively, the eighth largest economy in the world,” he stressed.
