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African Development Bank working to raise $100 billion to finance massive infrastructure projects on the continent
According to Obasanjo, intra-African trade, which has remained relatively low since the early 1990s while growing in Asia, Europe and North America, was a “sad commentary” on Africa’s integration process. “I do not buy the argument that we cannot trade among ourselves because we produce the same commodities. In Europe , France and Germany produce similar commodities but they trade heavily with each other,” he said.
Kenyan entrepreneur and industrialist Manu Chandaria, whose business interests span the continent and as far as China, said the private sector must lead in efforts to achieve faster growth and deeper trade partnerships. “Africa cannot wait for singular expansion. It must be multiple growth and this must be driven by the private sector.”
Apart from putting the private sector at the heart of Africa’s economic renaissance, African policy makers are looking at new ways of engaging the rest of the world in light of China and Asia’s growing economic influence.
According to Abdoulaye Mar Dieye, a director at the UNDP regional bureau for Africa, 7 of the 10 fastest-growing countries in the world in the last decade are in Africa and 16 out of the 29 countries expected to grow fastest in the next couple of years are also on the continent, there is a need to define a joint African economic policy of engagement.
“Africa needs to be cautious not to replace the Washington Consensus with the Beijing Accord,” he said, “Africa needs to develop its own consensus for partners to buy into.”
Source: The Africa Review and African Development Bank
