The Minister for Gender, Children, and Social Protection, Madam Lariba Zuweira Abudu, has urged leaders on the African continent to scale up investment in people, especially in the area of women’s and girls empowerment, to ensure economic prosperity.
The Minister made this statement at the African Human Capital Heads of State Summit in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania on 24th-26th July 2023.
As part of the Summit, Madam Lariba participated in a panel discussion where she advocated for Intercountry trade aimed at helping member states to trade within the African Continent with ease.
According to her Ghana has also been implementing a pro-poor policy-the LEAP progamme aimed at improving the living standard of the extremely poor.
The programme she said supports the poorest families in Ghana to better meet their basic needs, prioritize health, enrol children in school and improve their attendance, increase savings, and also work and invest more to pull themselves out of poverty.
She finally called for the enforcement of policies and efforts aimed at empowering women in business to appreciate their contribution to society.
The Summit comes in response to engagements with government focal points on the need to draw attention to the role of human capital growth and elevate the discussion on the importance of investing in people.
The three-day summit will bring a bottom-up demand to human capital prioritization and investment through technical workshops by discussing challenges and bottlenecks to human capital accumulation along with the identification of priorities and drivers of growth.
The overall theme of the Summit is linking investments in human capital to economic growth and harnessing the demographic dividend by learning about poverty and the skills gap for youth and women.
About 63 Ministers across the Continent are participating in the Summit.