The President of the Republic of Angola, João Lourenço, reaffirmed this Monday, in Accra (Ghana), the commitment of African leaders to the effective implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (ZLECAf). João Lourenço was speaking at a joint press conference with his counterpart from Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo.

At the end of the official conversations between the delegations of the two countries and the signing of a memorandum of intentions, within the framework of his State visit, President João Lourenço underlined that the creation of the ZLECAf, whose headquarters is in Accra, took into account the need for African states to look inwards, in search of internal solutions, which could help them achieve their development goals. He mentioned that during the meeting he held with his Ghanaian counterpart, they concluded that the implementation of the free trade area was a long process, but possible, if all countries were committed.

According to João Lourenço, it is necessary “that the current absurdity of having to travel to Europe to visit a brother country of our own continent not be maintained”. He also said that the continent "boasts of being one of the points in the world that has the world's largest reserves of mineral resources", but does not want to continue saying that "we are potentially rich, but we want to become , in fact, rich and it depends only on us, the Africans”. For the Angolan Head of State, the African Continental Free Trade Area is an instrument that will offer this possibility of making "the transition from exporters of raw materials to countries that create wealth on their own lands". In turn, the President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, underlined the cooperation between the two States, as well as the convergence on the vision of the future of the continent, which is to work for its effective development.