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The Nigeria Economic Summit Group, the Africa Economic Development Policy Initiative and the OCP Policy Centre of Morocco have announced the launch of the first edition of the Morocco-Nigeria Strategic Dialogues, which focuses on enhancing opportunities for growth and development.
The partnership, according to a statement, aims to play a pivotal role in bringing the two countries together, and catalysing debate and new ideas related to the future economic and other relationships between them.
The objective of the joint initiative, it stated, was to provide a platform for comparative analysis of the challenges and potential of the two economies as well as possible actions to promote complementary exchanges and synergies between them.
According to the statement signed by the Managing Director, OCP Policy Centre, Morocco, Karim El Aynaoui, the first edition would focus on a number of identified themes, including ‘Fiscal and Monetary Policies in Times of Uncertainty’; ‘The Complementarities between Nigeria and Morocco in the Energy Sector’; ‘The Role of Financial Markets and the Mobilisation of Local Resources’; as well as the ‘Role of Youths and Diaspora at the Regional and Continental levels’.
It would also explore the roles of Morocco and Nigeria as two strategic players within the African continent, Aynaoui said.
With regard to the mobilisation of local resources, the statement said majority of African countries were subjected to crippling foreign debts, which could ultimately paralyse their economic capacities if the foreign debt to Gross Domestic Product ratio remained dangerously high.
To unlock African agricultural potential and in the spirit of both countries’ commitment to South-South cooperation, Morocco and Nigeria strive to strengthen their partnership in the agricultural sector through the promotion of joint initiatives reflected in several memoranda of understanding signed between the OCP Group, Fertilizer Producers and Suppliers Association of Nigeria and the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority.
The agreements aim to reinforce the Presidential Fertilizer Initiative by securing the supply of quality fertilizers at competitive prices to farmers in Nigeria, and by supporting the national fertilizer blending programme by improving the efficiencies of existing blending plants and increasing their capacities to produce customised fertilizers adapted to Nigerian soils and crops.
[Punch]
