Sierra Leone's President Julius Maada Bio stressed Thursday importance of working towards attaining political stability, grasping and exploiting opportunities for the best of the African continent.
Speaking during the inauguration of the sixth International Africa Development Forum (FIAD) in Casablanca, he emphasized that Africa has enormous potentials, a high population and diverse natural resources.
He added that Africa offers huge opportunities for African investors in various sectors, underlining the need to fill the infrastructure gap. Maada Bio praised the commitment of Morocco's King Mohammed VI to the development in the African continent.
The forum is meant to bring together and connect 2,000 African figures from the worlds of business, finance and politics.
Mohamed El Kettani, Chairman and CEO of Attijariwafa Bank Group, said that the purpose of the forum is to gather all African actors in order to mull challenges facing Africa and possible means to transform them into opportunities.
Africa represents a “hope” to global growth since it maintains a reliable approach amid a fluctuating environment, he added.
African economic growth reached 3.5 percent in 2018 and is anticipated to rise to 4 percent in 2019, while inflation average dropped to 10.9 percent in 2018 from 12.6 percent in 2017, and is forecast to drop to 8.1 percent in 2020, he noted.
Africa has opportunities as much as it has challenges, Kettani said.
Regional integration is a key topic in the forum and significant progress has been made on the institutional level in which 44 out of 54 African states are now involved in regional federations, he stated, while highlighting efforts to establish an African free trade zone.
