‘Youths integral to Africa’s integration’
VICE PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa yesterday challenged African countries to invest in the younger generation to enhance integration as envisaged by the continent’s founding fathers.
VP Mnangagwa said this in an interview to mark the 54th Africa Day meant to celebrate the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), now the African Union (AU) in 1963.
“The current theme is, ‘Harnessing the Demographic Dividend by Investing in Youths’ or the younger generation,” he said.
“Each single state in Africa must invest in its people and that is providing them with education, providing them with good health, providing them with infrastructure, skills, for them to be competitive with the developed world.
“There is no need for Africa today to invent the wheel, we must be able to accept and tape and have the skills, the technologies already in developed countries, adapt those technologies or sciences to our own situations.
“This is what we must do and that must be inculcated in our youth and we will see that in the future the African continent as a unified continent will be a force to reckon with politically, economically and militarily. But to achieve that we have to walk step by step of building a united Africa.”
VP Mnangagwa said the continent’s founding fathers had set the vision for continental integration by fighting for the total liberation of the continent from colonial rule.
He said it was now up to current leaders to strengthen that unity in other spheres of life.
“Zimbabwe is joining the rest of the countries on the continent in celebrating Africa Day today (yesterday), the 54th anniversary of Africa Day,” he said.
“I think it is necessary to reflect on and say how did it come about.
“It came about because the founding fathers in 1963 felt it was necessary to unite Africa.
“The vision of the founding fathers Haile Selassie (Ethiopia), Nkwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Julius Nyerere (Tanzania), Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya) and others had a vision of this continent, our African continent, that it must be united.
“Primarily, at the time the priority was that the whole of Africa must be liberated as phase one of their vision. Phase two of their vision was that Africa must become one community, one economic bloc, one political bloc, that’s the vision they had.
“So, looking at the 54 years that have passed, we can look at the milestones that have been achieved as a result of the vision of the founding fathers.
“For instance, at this stage now we have five regions of Africa. The five regions integrate a number of states constituting the region. That’s the step which our leaders felt was the roadmap towards unifying the entire Africa as an integrated continent by first creating the five regions.”
The regions that have been established across the continent are Sadc, the Economic Community for West African States, the East African Community, Economic Community for Central African States and the Arab Maghreb Union.
VP Mnangagwa said Zimbabwe was playing its part in fostering integration in the region and on the continent.
“We have a part to play to promote trade between ourselves, to have our industries talk to each other, our trade talking to each other, our infrastructure talking to each other, our educational thrust talking to each other, the level of skills found in the region talking to each other, we must integrate, we must dialogue and then when we achieve that we have to relate to the next region and so on and at the end of the day Africa will be united,” he said.
“And the reason is that like Sadc, you have to have the 15 countries in Sadc integrate in terms of trade, transportation system, roads, air and so on and in terms of infrastructure like ICT, our agriculture, our trade, we must begin first by making sure we achieve internal integration of our trade as a region and then through Comesa you are having the various regions coming together to trade amongst themselves.”
VP Mnangagwa said Africa had faced challenges in its quest for unity, but solutions lay in the continent solving its problems internally.
“In the process of achieving this vision we have challenges,” he said.
“We are facing challenges of spots of conflicts, which are found on the continent.
“The first step we have achieved, and it has been accepted and that is, let African problems and challenges be solved by Africans themselves. We should not bring about solutions from outside Africa.
“These are African problems, these are African conflicts, let us ourselves as African States, African leaders resolve our problems by dialoguing by debating ourselves.”