New York (UN) – The African space overlooking the Atlantic is fraught with challenges relating to poverty, unemployment and under-development, but is also full of massive potentials that allow for facing and overcoming these challenges, Moroccan Foreign Minister, Saad Dine el Otmani said on Saturday.
The region hosts 46 pc of the African population, 55 pc of the African GDP and produces 57 pc of the continental trade.
El Otmani, who was chairing a luncheon on “cooperation challenges and perspectives between the African countries bordering the Atlantic,” said the countries along the southern part of the Atlantic are more exposed to the dangers threatening the region, mainly transnational crimes, piracy and traffic of all kinds.
It is essential to “look back at our work” in order to position ourselves “for the future of our Atlantic space which is beset with a number of challenges targeting its stability,” the minister said at the meeting, which is part of the annual meetings of the ministers of the 23 African countries bordering the Atlantic, an initiative that was launched in Rabat in August 2009.
The minister particularly warned against “trans-border organised crime and its links with armed groups, especially separatist and terrorist groups (…) which are a source of concern that we need to face, and which the international community should give heed to.”
For his part, deputy Foreign Minister, Youssef Amrani warned against piracy in the gulf of Guinea, calling for working to avoid any interaction between this region and the developments in the African Sahel.
