Africa still faces hurdles despite strong economic growth

Agenda 2063 was an improvement on past African development plans because it had arisen from consultations

JOHANNESBURG: Though African economies had been growing at an average of 5 percent a year this century, there were no grounds yet for overenthusiasm, the Executive Secretary of the UN’s Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), Carlos Lopes, said yesterday.

This growth “has not translated into decent jobs and the elimination of large pockets of poverty and pervasive inequality,” he told the AU’s executive council at the organisation’s summit in Johannesburg.

Lopes noted that Africa had weathered the global finance crisis of 2008/2009 better than most, and so “the narrative shifted from that of a ‘hopeless continent’ to that of ‘Africa rising’ .

This was the background against which the AU had celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2013 and adopted its Agenda 2063 as a longterm vision for continental development.

Lopes said Agenda 2063 was an improvement on past African development plans because it had arisen from wide-ranging consultations with all sectors of society.

However, even extensive consultations did not by themselves lead to highquality plans or even implementation.

“The negative perceptions about Africa will catch up with the wonderful intentions once again if we do not construct a reality that matches the aspirations of the continent, particularly its too much neglected youth and women,” Lopes warned.

He said that Africa’s leaders should themselves firmly drive the continent’s destiny to ensure Agenda 2063 became a reality.

This differed from past plans such as the Lagos Plan of Action, the Arusha Treaty and Nepad (the New Partnership for Africa’s Development), which were visions not accompanied by continental frameworks but implemented instead at the national level.

These plans were sometimes not given the opportunity to succeed because of competing and powerful external forces which had imposed a different pathway for Africa’s development.

These outside plans saw the African state as being the root of the problem and tried to roll back the state.

Lopes said that since the global economic crisis, the world had realised that the state and the market had to work together for development to succeed.

He said the most important component of Agenda 2063 was its clear commitment to the structural transformation of the continent, especially for Africa to industrialise for sustained growth, generating jobs and extracting maximum value addition from its natural resources.

It also required proper infrastructure that crossed national borders and connected whole regions to underpin Agenda 2063. Lopes said the reality of Africa was still 54 countries and eight recognised regional economic organisations, so it was important to synchronise these.

Fifty years was also a long time and much could change in that time so it was wise for the AU to have broken up Agenda 2063 into 10-year development plans, and to reinforce the process through a monitoring tool such as a set of African development goals.

AU Commission chairperson Nkosazana DlaminiZuma said that the 10-year plan would be adopted at this summit and would set the AU on the path to implementation of Agenda 2063.