Senior political leaders meeting on Saturday at the NEPAD Heads of State and Government Orientation Committee meeting in Kigali, Rwanda on 16 July 2016, called on the continental agency to leverage efforts in the improvement of industrialisation through existing trading blocs.

The Committee’s Chairperson Senegal President Macky Sall noted in his opening remarks the importance of re-orienting current policies to effectively grow African economies.

The 35th session of Committee focused its attention on industrialisation of the continent highlighting the need to actively engage the private sector in a number of investment plans.

Representing Rwanda’s President, Foreign Minister Ms. Louise Mushikiwabo urged delegates to consider and implement practical partnerships for sustainable development.

“Our goal of sustainable development cannot be reached without industrializing Africa. Our discussions are therefore of strategic importance and I look forward to a fruitful exchange leading to practical outcomes,” Ms. Mushikiwabo added.

Integrated into African Union structures and processes in 2010, the NEPAD Agency has coordinated a number of developmental projects including the Presidential Infrastructure Champion Initiative which under the leadership of Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame saw the roll out of fiber optic EAC five countries cable in 2013.

According to the Chairperson of the Africa Union Commission, now is the time for NEPAD Agency to bring to the fore, industrialization and other development aspects that can lead to the realization of the AU Agenda 2063.

“The commission and the agency have been engaged in discussion of allocation of responsibilities, in the context of a restructuring project, this includes strengthening the agency’s capacity to drive the implementation of our agriculture and agro-processing, infrastructure, science and technology in the industrialization programs on top of other priorities. We hope in the future to see NEPAD taking on the implementations of these,” she said.

In his presentation to delegates attending the meeting, NEPAD Agency CEO Dr. Ibrahim Assane Mayaki called on African leaders to own and lead regional programmes.

“These priorities are all linked to regional integration, because we all know that the optimal solutions to our national problems are not at the national level, but at the regional level, whether it is about trade, education, energy or transport.

“Thus one thing that we are requesting to the Heads of State is to be champions of these regional projects that will accelerate the connectivity of this continent, and since we are in Rwanda, the East African community has really embraced strongly that attitude, approach and strategy others should follow suit,” he said.

A key element of his address at the Summit included a presentation on the recently developed ‘dashboard’, which he said would provide the Agency and Member States an opportunity to track implementation targets of projects at the regional and continental level. He added that the tool would further enhance accountability. 

In his closing remarks President Sall expressed his gratitude to the NEPAD Agency for its ongoing commitment to the development of the continent.

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Press Briefing of H.E. Macky Sall, President of Senegal and H.E. Dr. Ibrahim Mayaki, CEO of NEPAD

African countries need to be strategic and work collaboratively in promoting industrialization in the continent as this will help in creating employment opportunities and become competitive in a global trading world.

Dr. Ibrahim Mayaki the Chief Executive Officer of New Partnership for African’s Development (NEPAD) told journalists’ attending the 27th African Union Summit in Kigali that the biggest challenges impeding the continent was a “Trade” whereby countries are not trading with each, lack of enough infrastructure and poverty.

Speaking at a press conference immediately after the NEPAD Heads of State and Government Orientation Committee (HSGOC) meeting held on 16 July 2016 at the margin of the AU Summit, Dr. Mayaki observed that the continent has the youngest population in the world that will need employment adding that clear strategies would be needed to facilitate the continent’s new generation.

Trade continues to play a major role in Africa’s economic growth performance and it has the potential to promote trade-induced industrialization of the continent provided it is deliberately directed at industrialization. For this purpose, trade policy must be consciously designed, effectively implemented and managed with regular monitoring and evaluation.

No doubt, Africa’s industrialization should take advantage of it's abundant and diverse resources including agricultural and mineral resources, however, the continent should exploit its comparative advantage in commodity-based industrialization and add-value to these resources using its abundant human capital.

“Our young generation needs jobs, they need food, clean water, and we must utilize the current size and potential opportunities we have in the continent to promote our industrialization in Africa,” Dr. Mayaki said while addressing the international and local media.

The huge challenges facing the continent are to maintain strong economic growth and to transform it to productivity-induced sustainable, inclusive, employment-generating, poverty-reducing, and environmentally-friendly growth.

The greatest deficiency of the current growth episode is its inability to promote the structural transformation of the economies of the region. Rudimentary agricultural practices and provision of services dominate the structure of African economies.

This overt dependence on traditional agriculture and services sectors can only support limited growth. Industrialization with its capability to generate direct and indirect employment, strong forward and backward linkages with other sectors of the economy including external sector not only promises to transform African economies but also to ensure that growth translates into sustainable development.

“We must provide assistance to the small-scale farmers and women if the continent is to develop economically. Investment in cross-border infrastructures like railway lines would be another factor to move our continent at the attractive level,” Dr. Mayaki added.

He mentioned that in Africa, informal small scale entrepreneurs invest $100billion annually adding that if these informal investors were facilitated to the formal level it would yield immense opportunities for the continent.

On the issue promoting agriculture as a cornerstone to the poverty eradication and enhancing investment in the sector, the NEPAD CEO further observed that Africa needs to embark on the implementation of Maputo declaration as this will create more investment opportunities to the continent.

At the Second Ordinary Assembly of the African Union in July 2003 in Maputo, African Heads of State and Government endorsed the “Maputo Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security in Africa”. The Declaration contained several important decisions regarding agriculture, but prominent among them was the commitment to the allocation of at least 10 percent of national budgetary resources to agriculture and rural development policy implementation within five years.

“However despite the declaration, some countries have gone ahead to implement it while others are yet to do so however officials are calling for its full implementation for the betterment of the continent,” concluded Dr. Mayaki.