Addis
Ababa,31 March 2015,-/African Media Agency (AMA)/- African leaders
including Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Mr. Ato Haliemariam Dessalegn, HE
Paul Kagame, President, Mr Carlos Lopes, Executive Secretary, UN
Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma,
Chairperson, AUC, and Mr El Moctar Djay, Minister of Finance,
Mauritania, participated in the opening address of the Conference of
Ministers 2015 in Addis Ababa. There was a strong call for action for
African nations to go for industrialisation for trade, integration,
self-reliance, ownership and a Common African Position on the Post-2015
Development Agenda.
A unified Africa requires urgent
collaboration towards regional integration and the political will to
make it happen, announced, President Kagame in his keynote address.
Highlighting the importance of self reliance and better use of domestic
resources, he said, "This gathering is a good starting point if we use
it wisely to determine where Africa goes next. There is value in once
more reviewing the plans to see why we are not there yet in achieving
the consistent results we want. Building new momentum requires that we
stop thinking about development as something we do with external
resources. We must focus on making better use of what we already have,
domestically, in terms of our national and regional markets."
Reiterating
the sentiment, HE Ato Haliemariam Dessalegn, PM, Ethiopia, said that
financing transformative development agenda will require substantial
levels of resource. "To do so, it is imperative that available resources
are used more effectively and strategically to catalyze additional
financing from official and private sectors."
"Agenda 2063 will
require substantial financial resources and we must look into domestic
sources to fund this. I am sure that Africa has untapped public and
private resources that should be sufficient to meet the needs. If we
want to sustain the remarkable economic growth recorded in the Continent
over the past decade, increased reliance on domestic resource is
absolutely necessary and domestic resource mobilization (DRM) should get
the first priority and greater attention in our discussions here and
then after."
Mr Dessalegn added, "The potential for increased
DRM is enormous, especially considering the current low levels of
taxation. Tax as a share of GDP has only increased marginally over
recent years and many countries are recording a tax ratio of less than
10 per cent. Also, DRM in the form of private savings is mainly hampered
by lack of access to financial services in rural areas. In our
continent, large parts of population have limited access to financial
access as they are considered too poor to be able to save money and too
risky to lend money to."
Mr Carlos Lopes, Executive Secretary,
ECA, highlighted the need to link industrialization to trade to meet the
needs of Agenda 2063. He explained, "While the last 15 years have seen
relatively high levels of growth driven by a commodity super-cycle and
strong internal demand from a growing middle class, Africa is still
dependent on commodities for most of its export earnings. There is now
broad consensus that, without diversified economies, Africa will remain
prone to exogenous shocks and trapped in the paradox of high growth
rates, coexisting with high levels of unemployment and extreme poverty."
He
revealed, "The key factors constraining trade and industrialization in
Africa are related to Africa's narrow production and export base, which
is dominated by low-value products such as raw materials and primary
commodities. This is compounded by very high trade costs, tariffs and
non-tariff barriers to intra-African trade and Africa's access to
international markets. We have no alternative but to increase our share
of global exports. While in the 1970s, Africa accounted for 4.99 per
cent of world trade and East Asia 2.25 per cent, by 2010, we had
regressed to 3.33 per cent, while East Asia had soared to 17.8 per cent.
Limited by poor infrastructure and inefficient logistics, lack of
adequate skills and quality inputs, insufficient provision of credit and
financial services, ours has become a story of lost opportunity. The
time has come for us to awake. Africa's current trade policy plays a
major role in our inability to excel."
Meanwhile, Dr Nkosazana
Dlamini-Zuma, Chairperson, AUC, called for a skills revolution to make
the Agenda 2063 work. She said, "A lot of people say that Agenda 2063 is
too ambitious, however, a childhood friend of mine once said that 'a
person who is not ambitious is a danger to society'. Our people are the
ones that will drive the agenda, so we need to invest in our people.
Africa is rich, but the Africans are poor. We have abundant human,
mineral and natural resources and arable land - so why are we poor? We
need to shift our focus to STEM areas (e.g. Ethiopia) where the skills
revolution has been critical - it is critical to Agenda 2063."
Recapping
the theme, Mr El Moctar Djay, Minister of Tax, Mauritania, said,
"Structural transformation is essential for Africa's transformation. All
institutions need to work together to make post MDGS and Agenda 2063
work. This conference is imperative for a consensus on financing
development, especially, to chart out the first 10 years of Agenda 63.
Collectively we must find synergies between our regional programmes and
Agenda 2063; and define domestic resource mobilization strategies to
ensure that these programmes are well implemented."
The session
concluded with a rallying call from President Kigami, where he urged the
room to develop a sense of urgency. He said, "We have decided where we
want to be on 50 years time. We seem to have everything we need to
achieve a Agenda 2063, except a sense of urgency."
Distributed by African Media Agency (AMA) on behalf of the ECA.
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