Africa can benefit from Spain's experience for its evolution in various sectors

Madrid hosted the Africa-Spain Cooperation Summit, which addressed various proposals to improve the economic relationship between Spain and the neighbouring African continent and which analysed the importance of Africa when it comes to investing in various sectors to be exploited. 

In this sense, Atalayar was able to speak with Mariétou Coulibaly, Director General of the Regional Consular Chamber of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA), who attended the summit and offered the keys to understanding what role Spain and its companies can play in Africa when it comes to investing, with a special focus on West Africa.  

What role can Spain play for African countries? What can Spanish companies contribute to Africa?  

First of all, allow me a minute to introduce the institution I represent. I am Ms. Mariétou Coulibaly, Director General of the Regional Consular Chamber, a body of the West African Economic and Monetary Union, whose main mission is to ensure the effective participation of the private sector in the integration process. Indeed, my presence at the summit served to represent the private sector. I also came to participate in this forum in order to listen, to meet with the partners and to see what we can do together with these partners, in particular with the Spanish partners.  

In fact, we are aware that Spain has a lot of experience and know-how in certain specific fields, and why not try to see what we can do together in these specific areas.  

What is your assessment of this year and what are your objectives for the future, for the coming years?  

For the coming years, we are essentially working on supporting our private sector members in West Africa, in the context of resilience, in fact. Because, as you know, we have just gone through several crises, including COVID, and now we are in the middle of the Ukrainian crisis, with all that entails in terms of inflation and so on. So our perspective is really to support and help West African economic actors to cope with shocks and then to strengthen the resilience of their activities. 

Could you make a brief conclusion on this forum and on the opportunity for Spain to enter into these kinds of African countries?  

I can say that the participation of the RCC in this summit has been very beneficial, because it has allowed me to meet with partners in Europe, and in particular with Spanish partners, to talk about what we are doing, to exchange views on what they are doing, and to see what other opportunities there are for collaboration, in specific areas, of course. My mission is also to inform the economic actors and try to see how we can meet again in the future to discuss, exchange ideas and see how we can work together, in the framework of a win-win partnership, of course.