Uganda hosts conference on Africa’s future
Kampala, Uganda (PANA) = Political and business leaders on Tuesday met in Kampala, Uganda, to discuss the future of Africa, focusing especially on the economy and how it will serve the youth.
The two-day conference, which was under the theme of “Leadership needed to Catalyse Africa’s Transformation”, , was opened by Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni.
The event, attended by Somalia’s President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, Kenya’s Vice President William Ruto and Tanzania’s Vice President Samia Suluhu, also attracted hundreds of top business executives.
Nigerian economist and billionaire Tony Elumelu, chairman of Heirs Holdings, gave the key note address, delving into what he considered to be the roadblocks to Africa’s development.
He said failure to speedily transform from feudal organisation exposed African societies to colonialism, which robbed them of vital resources and led to ‘ideological disorientation’.
Commenting on the effects of colonialism on African society, Museveni said: “The feudal class of Africa that competed for power with colonialists was decimated, leaving only the peasantry. Many years of fascist revolution didn’t deliver social transformation.”
After independence, Museveni said African economies still got the formula wrong and transformation was slow. During the 1960s, he said, economists talked about growth and development, especially emphasizing quantitative expansion of their respective sectors, instead of focusing on transformation.
For transformation to occur, Museveni said African economies must work to expand the private sector and remove the ‘strategic bottlenecks’ that bedeviled them and do away with ‘ideological disorientation’.
“Apart from liberating the private sector, we say that ideological transformation is another bottleneck of transformation which then leads to a weak state,” Museveni said.
“By addressing the issues of education and health, we will have removed two strategic bottlenecks.”
In his keynote address, Elumelu said: “We have growth today but we need more inclusive growth. Today, we have inequalities where the poor are getting poorer and the rich richer.”
Speaking on the theme, stated: “We need leaders who care about humanity, who are interested and genuinely committed to leaving the society better than they found it; leaders who understand legacy and care about the future of Africa.”
Elumelu said the middle class in Africa was almost disappearing, which was why he said the search for the kind of leadership he referred to “must be a long exercise”.
“Leadership isn’t about the public sector, it's also about people and the private sector,” Elumelu stated, stressing that Africa in general faced immense inequality where the poor were getting poorer and the rich richer.
Ruto, the deputy president of Kenya, called for a surge in manufacturing as opposed to relying on primary production.
“Africa will truly be sovereign when we stop being a source of raw materials and a market for finished goods and become manufacturers of our own goods,” he said.
To spur investment, Ruto said investment in world class infrastructure and stable green energy sources must be prioritised.
The conference was organised by the Africa Strategic Leadership Centre, whose vision is “to achieve a shared agenda, followed with complementary actions for building social order, political stability and inclusive economic growth across the African continent”.
This ts the first of a number of conferences the think tank intends to organise under the theme “Africa Now Summit”.
-0- PANA EM/RA 12Mar2019
