Ghana’s Speaker of Parliament, Rt. Hon. Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin used a major parliamentary economic platform in Marrakesh this week to press regional economic blocs to look outward, urging African, Euro-Mediterranean and Gulf institutions to move past intra-regional integration.
He is calling for what he termed “constructing formidable relationships” across regions for mutual economic gain.
Addressing the 4th Marrakesh Parliamentary Dialogue, Speaker Bagbin told delegates that existing regional economic arrangements, however effective internally, risk becoming limiting structures if they do not connect outward to other regional markets.
He framed the call directly, advising blocs to move beyond “building regional economic silos” toward partnerships that expand “economic opportunity for mutual profit” between Africa, the Euro-Mediterranean zone, and the Gulf states.
Central to his pitch was Ghana’s positioning as a natural convergence point for cross-regional trade. The Speaker pointed to the country’s location on the West African coast as offering “a natural gateway” to landlocked Sahelian states and to global shipping lines, a geographic advantage he said positions Ghana to boost “both intra and inter-regional trade.”
He cited the country’s stable political environment, improving transport infrastructure, and expanding port facilities at Tema and Takoradi as further competitive strengths that ought to draw international business attention, while noting that the government’s deliberate alignment of industrialisation and export diversification strategies, including the planned transition to a 24-hour economy, would support continuous production, trade facilitation, and global competitiveness.
Bagbin further outlined the policy architecture Ghana has built to support deeper continental and inter-regional trade. He referenced a dedicated policy framework and action plan for implementing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), alongside a National Export Development Strategy (NEDS) designed to revitalise the country’s export base with a sharper focus on tapping Africa’s market of over 1.3 billion consumers.
According to him, the action plan sets out guidance for mainstreaming AfCFTA implementation through value-addition to exports, building capacity to compete more effectively with imports, and expanding job-creation opportunities tied to export growth.
The Marrakesh Parliamentary Dialogue, organised by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean and the House of Councillors of the Kingdom of Morocco in partnership with the Parliamentary Network of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, brought together senior policymakers, civil society representatives and academics from across Africa, the Euro-Mediterranean region and the Gulf.
The Forum’s four thematic panels tackled public debt and trade impediments, investment in artificial intelligence and a proposed Euro-Mediterranean and Gulf AI Hub, sustainable job creation through regional incubators and the Blue Economy, and the impact of climate change on food security, discussions that fed directly into Bagbin’s broader argument that economic resilience now depends on regions actively building bridges with one another rather than deepening only their own internal integration.
On the sidelines of the Forum, the Speaker held bilateral meetings with his counterparts from the United Arab Emirates and Niger, as well as the President of the Moroccan House of Councillors, engagements that parliamentary officials described as part of efforts toward the same goal of strengthening formidable, cross-regional ties that Bagbin placed at the heart of his Marrakesh address.
