Ekaterina Zaharieva Meets the President of Togo
01 June 2018 News
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ekaterina Zaharieva conferred with the President of the Togolese Republic Faure Essozimna Gnassingbé within the framework of her visit to the African country.
Zaharieva is in Togo to co-chair the 43rd Session of the Joint Council of Ministers of the European Union and the Africa, Caribbean, and Pacific Group of States (ACP), which is taking place on Thursday and Friday.
“In Lomé today, we together are writing a new chapter in EU-Africa relations. I am grateful to Togo for playing a constructive and active role in this process, as well as for the excellent arrangements for the forum,” Ekaterina Zaharieva said, referring to the start of negotiations on a new EU-ACP agreement, due this coming autumn, which should supersede the expiring Cotonou Agreement in 2020. She emphasised that the EU greatly appreciates partnership with both the ACP and with the African Union and that the Togolese Republic is active in both organisations. Zaharieva stressed the importance of enlisting Europe’s private business in African development programmes in partnership with the European Investment Bank, which has already reconfirmed its commitment.
The chief Bulgarian diplomat assured President Gnassingbé that before the end of the Bulgarian EU Council Presidency, the EU will be ready with its negotiating positions on the future relationship with the ACP, so that negotiations on a post-2020 agreement could start in late August or early September 2018.
“Bulgaria regards the countries of sub-Saharan Africa as important partners and has pursued friendly relations with most of them in the course of decades, which we are now trying to revive and develop further,” Zaharieva went on to say. She listed the priority sectors in which Bulgarian business can be involved: mining, manufacture of medicines for human and animal use, high technology, vocational training, agriculture, food processing, and the energy sector. As an EU Member State, Bulgaria also provides African goods with excellent access to third markets in the Union.
“So far Togo was focused on several countries as business partners, mainly France and Germany. We must broaden this horizon,” President Faure Gnassingbé said. He promised to explore with his country's Government opportunities for organising a business forum with the participation of companies from Bulgaria and Central and Eastern Europe
President Faure Gnassingbé highly commended Bulgaria’s long-standing commitment to the training of experts, to the construction of infrastructure projects and industrial development assistance in Africa. “The only way to ensure that the African economies generate value added is to pursue the manufacture of finished goods and not just extract and export raw materials,” he argued. Thus, Togo is the world’s 19th largest producer of phosphates, but a fertiliser plant has not been set up since the country's independence in 1960,” the President of Togo illustrated his argument. Minister Zaharieva agreed, saying that the same approach should be adopted in food processing: staking on finished products rather than just on exporting inputs.
President Gnassingbé singled out the disconnection between education and the needs of business as yet another substantial problem.
Minister Zaharieva suggested to him to weigh the options of resuming scholarships for the tuition of African students in Bulgaria, in which our country has amassed ample experience, especially in agriculture and engineering.
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