Last year's food crisis and the current global financial downturn should be enough motivation for Africa to quicken the pace of building its own infrastructure and other key resources in order to wean itself off aid, ECOWAS president Mohamed Ibn Chambas has said."We don't need any more excuses. The crisis should teach us enough lessons that it is time to wake up," he reiterated.
Dr Chambas who was addressing an ECOWAS Business Forum in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, said Africa economies should also begin pursuing partnerships with emerging economies such as China, Brazil and India as part of building new external markets."We have oil and gas in this region. We have rivers, many of which have energy potentials," he enumerated and wondered why the region, which serves as a source of uranium supply to some countries abroad, should itself be living in darkness.
Dr Chambas said the crisis showed the unsustainability of the policy of ignoring the development of local agriculture in favour of imports and provides a unique opportunity to re-launch West African agriculture as a business for sustainability."We have no business complaining about food crisis when we have well-endowed land and other natural resources to tap for the development of our people." Another priority, he said, should be the pooling of resources to support the private sector to develop a dynamic capital market, capable of promoting critical investments in the region.The forum, the second after the maiden event in Accra, brought together about 400 people, mostly from the private sector. It provided the platform for ECOWAS to build synergy among the private sector and involve them more intensively in the integration process.
Participants would brainstorm and draw an action plan on how to build effective partnerships to grow a robust economy.
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