The Diplomat
The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Ibero-America and the Caribbean, Cristina Gallach, chaired yesterday the second working meeting of the Africa Roundtable, the main mechanism of the III Africa Plan for dialogue with Spanish civil society and to promote Spanish foreign action with African countries.
During the meeting, Gallach explained the action program of the III Africa Plan, called Africa Focus 2023, presented on March 29th by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and reported on the recent trip of the Chief Executive to Angola and Senegal and the trips of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, and herself to Sub-Saharan Africa in recent months.
For his part, Jaime Montalvo, from the Spanish Chamber of Commerce, stated during the meeting that “the Africa Focus is an excellent coordination initiative, highly requested by companies”, and Marta Blanco, from CEOE, declared that “the Africa agenda has become exponentially more dynamic” and that when “the different actors (companies, academia and other civil society) act together, each one of them benefits”.
For her part, Marta Iglesias (MPDL and Member of the NGDO Coordinator) asked that “NGDOs be included in the preparation of (high-level) trips to Africa to generate alliances with development cooperation actors”, while Silvia Frias (Amref Salud Africa) proposed that the Africa Roundtable, on behalf of the representatives of the Development Cooperation sector, promote reflection and exchange on “climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies”, on a multisectoral scale and with the objective of agreeing on concrete recommendations.
The members of the Africa Roundtable valued very positively the incorporation of new members to its working groups, particularly associations of African immigrants in Spain and Afro-Spanish, considering that their points of view will better reflect the diversity of Spanish society and will enrich the work of the Africa Roundtable.
As representatives of civil society, the meeting was attended by Marta Iglesias (MPDL), member for political advocacy of the Governing Board of the NGDO Coordinator; Ignacio Valero (CESAL), Silvia Frias (Amref Salud Africa), Marta Blanco, president of CEOE International; Salim Falaja (Exporters and Investors Club), Jaime Montalvo (Spanish Chamber of Commerce), Ainhoa Marín (Real Instituto Elcano), Elsa Aimé González (Fundación Alternativas) and Antumi Toasijé (Pan-African Center).
