CONCENTRATE ON DEVELOPMENT

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Wednesday, 31 October 2012 23:29

MR PAUL KAGAME, PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF RWANDA. By Veneranda Sumila The Citizen Reporter Kigali. With an annual turnover of about $0.5 trillion from its natural resources, Africa needs to invest just five per cent of the bulk on key development sectors for the continent to kiss goodbye foreign aid dependence, it has been said.African Development Bank (AfDB) president Dr Donald Kaberuka said on Tuesday – during the ongoing Africa Economic Conference here -- that investing five per cent of Africa’s natural resource returns in sectors like agriculture and infrastructure will hasten the pace of the continent’s economic development. “It is a shame for African countries to beg for assistance from countries whoes natural resources cannot not match with those of Africa,” Dr Kaberuka said in his opening remarks at the Economic Conference here. He urged African countries to cooperate and stop working individually. “Among the reasons why we don’t achieve economic growth is because countries concentrate on solving their individual problems and they forget to focus on continental ones, which if they were to jointly solved them, they would do so with a bigger impact in the continent’s economic development,” argued Dr Kaberuka. He urged Africans to own their continent’s decision-making mechanism, saying the solution to African problems rests in mobilisation of internal resources. He said governments must invest in sectors that employ the majority of the population. Earlier, officiating the conference, Rwandan President Paul Kagame called upon Africans to learn a thing or two from their failed past economic development initiatives, urging countries to build confidence over home-grown economists and other experts. “If countries were to work on advice given by their own economists, the continent would reach far. Let Africans talk and find solutions to their problems because they know their continent a lot better than anyone else,” said Mr Kagame. For her part, Ms Helen Clark, an administrator with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said leadership transformation is key to attaining economic development in the continent. “Despite the challenges we face in the economic growth, Africa also needs to work on the challenge of leadership transformation. Countries must also invest adequately in the education of the young,” she said.