Africa can help itself out of poverty

By Isabella Gyau Orhin

An advisor to the Vice President and Manger of the Partnership Group of the World Bank in Africa Prof. Benno Ndulu has called on Africans to work very hard to move the continent out of poverty and economic malaise.
Speaking at a media interaction programme organized by the Ghana Journalists Association in collaboration with the World Bank in Accra Prof. Ndulu. an African National from Tanzania said “Success is not foreign to Africa, countries have made it and a third of African countries have improved over the past two decades.”
The discussion was on the report of a study dubbed Facing the challenges of African Growth: Opportunities, Constraints, and Strategic Directions which refers to four constraints facing Africa. These consist of Infrastructure, Investment, Innovation and Institutions. .
He said Africa holds a very huge proportion of their wealth outside the continent. In 1990, he said the wealth of Africa outside the continent was said to be around 300 billion dollars. Now it has grown to about 600 billion dollars.

“This is what gives me hope that we can build on these and fix things,” he said stressing “Nobody will do it for us.”
He said over the years African countries like Mauritius and Bostwana have moved forward with Mauritius relying on its manufactured export led market while Bostwana has developed through its natural resource base. He said countries like Ghana, Tanzania and Uganda have also moved forward economically.
He said a country like Nigeria has a lot of money coming in a result of its oil and the nation can make good use of that resource.
While the global business environment is a major concern that cannot be ignored, Prof. Ndulu said Africans can do a lot in spite of the global business climate.
“How much leverage do we have in changing the world environment as opposed to what we can do with what we have?”
Speaking in his Capacity as an African Scholar, Prof. Ndulu said a lot of things happen within African countries which must be transcended if Africa is to make headway in economic development.
He the leadership of African countries over the years have been worried about local people having businesses and becoming rich for fear that they may use their wealth to sponsor opposition party activities. “As these are going on foreigners with money are not questioned,” he said adding, “what is good for the foreign investor is also good for he local investor as well.

Speaking about the activities of the world bank in Africa, Prof. Ndulu said within the bank lessons have been learnt than wholesale privatization is not good enough and does not solve the problems of African countries as envisaged earlier.
For me, the modus operandi is the Public Private Partnership (PPP).
Some of the lessons learned he said are that infrastructure to a large extent is a public good. For instance he said investing in the rail sector is dangerous for the private sector. The Public sector can play a major role in financing while the private sector sees to the management of it,” he said.
He said privatization of telecommunications has done better but water and infrastructure has been the toughest.
The Lead Economist of he African Region of the World Bank Zeljko Bogetic said Ghana’s recent improvements in growth is attributable to improved macro economic stability, accompanied by rising investment, productivity and higher aid.
He said over the past five to six years, Ghana’s growth accelerated significantly from a 35 year average of 2.7 percent to 5.6 percent. “An important part of the recent growth appears to be driven by productivity gains partly from agriculture such as the cocoa sector.
The cocoa sector he said has registered important improvements due to productivity enhancing measures such as disease control, use of proper varieties and fertilizers on small privately owned farms.
In spite of this Bogetic says productivity in Ghana is still below some of the most dynamic African economies and rapidly growing Asian countries.
He said Ghana is now one of the top five policy performers in Africa. He said Ghana enjoys favourable coastal position and many natural resources, but spatial constraints and urbanisation pose challenges to efficient and rapid expansion of private investments and exports.
Agricultural produce he said must be moved from village to market and produce must be standardised, refrigerated and efficiently transported and exported through the ports. This he said requires market and logistics infrastructure.

Source: Public Agenda newspaper, Ghana