The Former Vice President of Nigeria His Excellency, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo says Africa must collaborate for intra-African trade to achieve economic development.
“Let’s work together for intra-African trade by building infra-African infrastructure that connects them both digitally and physically, especially on trade negotiations with regional blocs of the world.”
“35 percent of biopharmaceutical products and 30 percent of industrial chemicals were already being traded as a measure of intra-African trade.” He added
He made the pronouncement at this year’s BOMA of Africa event in Accra.
This year’s event is a joint initiative by AUDA-NEPAD and AfroChampions, which landmarks Africa’s progress towards the ambitious Agenda 2063.
It offers a unique chance to engage with leaders shaping Africa’s future and report on groundbreaking developments in the continent’s journey towards unity and progress.
This year’s edition is themed: “From Africa, We Want to Africa We Build”.
The Former Vice President urged Africa to create an environment for rewarding the talents of its people to prevent the movement of labour to other continents.
“Labour is always going to find a place well rewarded. It doesn’t matter whether Africa or the World, labour will move. We have a lot of movements from Asia, India America. Same you have movements of labour from Africa to places where talents would be rewarded.”
“The best thing for Africa to do is to create an environment for rewarding talents. Integrate trade, and digital transactions and work together to build a resilient, rich, prosperous economy; then people will stay and come from everywhere in the world to Africa. There’s no other solution”.
He said Africa alone had the biodiversity reserves and the scale of natural capital to reverse centuries of ecological erosion and the unbridled carbon-laden industrialization of yesterday.
“During the pandemic, Africa, through the collaboration of Panavirus and the Africa CDC, brokered by AfroChampions, built and deployed the world’s first vaccine passport.
“For Africa, we need African economic statesmen to champion African economic cooperation prepared to make the selfless sacrifices that individual nations must be able to eat from the much bigger pie and a more lasting pie.”
A system that currently makes borrowing for Africa eight times sometimes hostage that countries and other regions are simply untenable”, he added.
A Former Chairperson of the African Union Commission Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma expressed worry that Africa, with its huge youthful population, had become a supplier of labour to other parts of the world.
“If they go somewhere else, it should be out of choice, not out of desperation, as it’s happening today. But also, I always get this complaint about how difficult it is around African countries.”
“Our minds and our trajectory to 2063 cannot be determined only by investors. Otherwise, we are colonized. It must be determined by what we can do, what we want to do.” She added
