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| - Stopping irregular migration and bolstering trade ties will top the agenda when Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez visits Angola and Senegal this week. With Spain's tourism-driven economy shrinking by nearly 11 percent last year as a result of the pandemic, officials are now looking further afield for opportunities. Sanchez will begin his tour on April 8 in the southwest nation of Angola, taking with him business leaders from the engineering, energy and logistics sectors as well as from plane-maker Airbus. He is scheduled to meet President Joao Lourenco before flying north to Senegal, the west African nation helping Spain to block irregular immigration to Spain's Canary Islands. In 2020, the number of migrants reaching the Atlantic archipelago from the African coast was eight times higher than the previous year. Spain has stepped up diplomatic efforts to stop people from leaving their home countries in the first place, while also seeking to expand controversial repatriation agreements. When he lands in Dakar for the first visit by a Spanish leader in six years, Sanchez will meet President Macky Sall as well as some 60 Spanish police officers deployed there to block irregular migrants. He will also meet Spanish troops that support France's Operation Barkhane, which has been battling a jihadist insurgency in Mali. "We want to turn this decade... into the decade of Spain in Africa," Sanchez said late last month as he unveiled a plan to become Africa's "strategic partner". Between January and November last year, Africa accounted for 6.0 percent of Spanish exports and 7.0 percent of its imports. Although modest, the figures were higher than those for Latin America, which stood at 4.3 percent and 4.8 percent respectively. Spain is pinning much of its hope on the renewable energy sector, but it is also looking to build its presence in manufacturing, banking, telecoms and agribusiness. Madrid has been courting the backing of Ghana for its renewed interest in Africa, with Accra housing the secretariat of the AfCFTA, a free trade body covering 54 African countries. Visiting Madrid last week, Ghana's President Nana Akufo-Addo urged investors to take advantage of the pan-African single market where almost all tariffs are to be eliminated by 2034. "Imagine the business opportunities that this huge market will offer for manufacturing and service firms," he said. Sanchez has backed moves to increase the so-called special drawing rights at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that offer vulnerable countries -- many of them in Africa -- a way to improve liquidity without it being counted as debt. And last year, Spain contributed 63 million euros to the capital increase of the African Development Bank, which since 2015 has financed 59 projects with Spanish participation, including the Senegambia bridge across the River Gambia which was inaugurated in 2019. avl/hmw/jxb
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