The Continental body said Ghana’s championing of democracy, gender equality and its adoption of mechanisms to address issues of climate change, gave confidence to the socio- economic space in the country.

This came to the fore when Ambassador Smail Chergui, the African Union’s Commissioner for Peace and Security called on President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo at the Jubilee House in Accra on Wednesday to present a copy of the report on Ghana’s Structural Vulnerability and Resilience Assessment.

The AU’s Country Structural Vulnerability and Resilience Assessment (CSVRA) CSVRA is designed to facilitate the identification of a country’s structural vulnerability to conflict at an early stage, with special emphasis on areas that are relevant in identifying drivers of violent conflict including, socio-economic development; good governance, rule of law, democracy and human rights; security sector; environment and climate change; gender and youth; post-conflict peace-building; and transitional justice and reconciliation.

The CSVMS process culminates in the development of strategic and medium to long-term measures that are designed to address the structural vulnerabilities to make countries more resilient to conflict. It further explores the dimensions upon which the AU and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) can best support the actions to be undertaken in the implementation of the mitigation strategy.

Ghana is the first country to have volunteered for the assessment.

“Through this exercise, we found out that Ghana is really beacon of stability, democracy and the policies, conduct in this country under your leadership Mr. President, gives confidence to the social economic space here”, Ambassador Chergui said.

“We also note with great pleasure, the progress in gender equality in key positions of the government; we also noticed the adaptation of all mechanisms here to the climate change, we also noticed that on security, the country is doing well; in fact, per capita, violence is one of the lowest here,” he said.

Thus, the AU Commissioner commended Ghana for being the pioneer of the Continental body’s new assessment endeavour of member states, which found that Ghana had a good early warning system to prevent conflict.

However, he noted some shortcomings in the Ghana report and urged the government to work on them.

Ambassador Chergui commended President Akufo-Addo’s exceptional leadership and his role in promoting the African agenda and pushing for greater trade and not aid between the Continent and the rest of the world.

”I think we need leaders like you to really take us forward in dealing with the challenges that are coming”,

President Akufo-Addo on his part said Ghana attached a great deal of importance to the Africa Union and the continental objective of unification and integration.

“You know very well that our first leader was one of the biggest torchbearers of the Pan African banner, it has since then been the commitment of successive leaders of Ghana to the Pan African agenda”

“It’s come to my turn, we continue to believe that Ghana’s national interest is inextricably linked to this continental agenda; so whatever we can do always to push forward the claims of the continent, we believe it is in our interest to do so”, he said, and assured of the implementation of the recommendations of the report.