Ghana’s President Receives Serbia’s Highest National Award

Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo was on Monday decorated with the medal of the Order of the Republic of Serbia by the country’s President Aleksandar Vucic in Belgrade.

Akufo-Addo was awarded “for exceptional merits in developing and strengthening cooperation and friendly relations between the Republic of Serbia and Ghana,” said the communications bureau of the presidential palace in Accra, Jubilee House.

He becomes the 31st African leader to receive the top award.

The award was bestowed on the sidelines of a ceremony to celebrate the founding of the 60th anniversary of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which the Ghanaian leader attended.

Akufo-Addo, one of the speakers at the conference, reiterated Ghana’s support to NAM, indicating that since the days of Ghana’s first President Kwame Nkrumah, one of the five founding fathers of NAM, Ghana has remained a faithful adherent of its principles.

“We believe that the strength of this movement is determined not just by its numbers, but more significantly, by the attachment to the principles that founded it,” the president said.

“There will be challenges. But working hand-in-hand, we can move ahead together, and indeed much further, more so when through our co-operation and solidarity, we achieve the restructuring of the global financial system to facilitate the rapid development of our economies.

“The next 60 years of our movement must mark its empowerment to meet the wishes and aspirations of our peoples for development, dignity and diversity,” he added.

Akufo-Addo also held bilateral talks with Serbia’s president aimed at strengthening cooperation between the two countries, among other things.

The talks, according to Ghana’s Information Ministry, have resulted in the doubling of scholarship allocations of Ghanaians studying in Serbia from 16 to 32.