New AfDB Chief, Adesina to Focus on Powering Africa…

Buhari calls for new approach to Africa’s economic challenges

The new President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, has said he will in the incoming years, focus on tackling Africa’s chronic power shortages to unlock its economic potential.

Adesina, a former Nigerian agriculture minister, said this at his swearing-in as AfDB’s eighth president yesterday in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.

He said unlocking the continent’s economic potential would help in ending its vulnerability to fluctuations in commodity prices.

“Though it boasts nearly a billion people, sub-Saharan Africa consumes about as much power as Spain, with less than five percent that number, due to poor generating capacity and limited transmission networks.

“Two-thirds of Africans have no access to electricity.

“The lack of reliable power grids is a major obstacle to industrialising the continent’s economies at a time when Africa hopes to make a transition from commodities producer to a manufacturing hub and challenge Asia where labour costs are rising,’’ he said. Adesina, according to the News

Agency of Nigeria (NAN), said the International Energy Agency noted that Africa required an additional $450 billion in power sector investment, to halve blackouts and achieve electricity access for all in urban areas by 2040.

He said Africa could easily be growing at double-digit GDP rates “if we solve this problem of energy.”

The 55-year-old, former Nigerian agriculture minister, said energy poverty on the continent has to be solved as a matter of urgency, as a matter of scale.

“This is going to be my most important priority, because Africa has to industrialise.

“We have to add value so that Africa does not expose itself to the continued volatility of global prices for commodities,” he said.

The AfDB president said Africa needs to mimic China and other Asian countries’ use of abundant supply of cheap labour to take advantage of globalisation and attract investment.

“As wages rise in China and elsewhere in Asia, Africa can offer a competitive edge with its cheaper workforce.

“Wages in China have increased by over 10 per cent annually over the past decade, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics,’’ he said.

Adesina said there are lot of opportunity in Africa today and there is urgent need to take advantage of these wage differentials, especially in terms of light manufacturing, textiles, footwear and others.

Adesina, a development economist with a doctorate from Purdue University in the United States was elected in May to head the AfDB for a five-year term.

Meanwhile, President Muhammadu Buhari has called for a new approach to solving African economic challenges.

Buhari, who was represented at the investiture of Adesina as the AfDB president in Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire, by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (SAN), said African countries should have a re-think of ‘some of the time-worn economic ideas and myths that have held them bound to a few options’.

A statement by Osinbajo’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mr Laolu Akande, said the vice president called for uncommon creativity, innovation and change in charting the pathway for future growth and development.

Justifying the call for this paradigm shift, Osinbajo said western economies particularly United States of America had toed such path to emerge from its recent economic meltdown in 2008.

He said: “In 2008, western economies faced with what Ben Bernanke described as the “deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression” abandoned conventional free-market thinking and embraced state bankrolled stimulus plans to forestall the imminent collapse of their economies.”

He noted that “this proved once and for all that the monster called the economy cannot be allowed to prowl the streets with its free-wheeling struts without the leash of a trainer.”

According to him, Africa needs a new strategy in the face of daunting challenges.

He asked: “How can trickle down paradigms work when half our populations are extremely poor?”

The vice-president however expressed optimism that the African Development Bank, given its recent achievements under the out-gone President, Donald Kaberuka, could greatly assist Africa address some of its socio-economic problems.

He stated further that under the new leadership of Adesina, “the AfDB needs to redouble its efforts in addressing the needs of these fragile areas, through institutional support, emergency assistance, and bold pro-poor interventions in health, education and agriculture.”

Osinbajo therefore urged the new AfDB president “to focus on how economic policy can produce economic empowerment for women, and all categories of our people who have become disempowered and whose voices