Last week, two ‘great events’ happened in the African Continent. The Africa Forward Summit was held in Nairobi, Kenya, and the Africa CEO Forum was held in Kigali, Rwanda.
President William Ruto and French President Emmanuel Macron co-hosted the Africa Forward Summit. The summit aimed to attract more foreign capital to Africa, build global partnerships for the continent, and drive innovation into production. The summit was focused on using public policies to aggressively drive the private sector participation.
The Africa CEO Forum was organized by the Pan-African Magazine – The Africa Report, and it is the biggest gathering of private sector leaders, as African business leaders gather in one room to canvass divergent ways for a shared African prosperity.
President Kagame harped on the need for African nations to stop cheaply exporting raw materials to industrialized nations and start manufacturing locally, as well as processing raw materials.
Much as these summits are good, tragically, they end up as mere talk shops, as the treacherous African leaders are really not interested in taking their people out of the shackles of poverty.
Africa’s problems started in the 1980’s, a few decades after the political independence of most African nations, when the World Bank and International Monetary Fund introduced the structural adjustment program to most African nations.
The SAP elements were largely the disputed IMF conditionalities for obtaining loans from the institution. The conditionalities, which are the set of economic policies, structural reforms and targets a country must implement before obtaining financial assistance from the Fund, include total adoption of market forces or deregulating prices; reduction in government spending, including reduction in government employment, increasing tax revenue and subsidy removal; currency devaluation and clean floating of the exchange rate; raising interest rates to curb inflation, and removing trade barriers.
Political historians recall how the then Nigerian Military Head of State, General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida allowed debates for the IMF conditionalities, which most Nigerians roundly rejected, only for him to still yield to the pressure of the Bretton Woods Institutions.
In my humble opinion, enough of these foreign-inspired conferences and summits. Africa needs more patriotic and nationalistic leaders who will formulate homegrown economic policies that will permanently take Africa out of the woods.
Africa is of age to be economically independent and stop taking ruinous advice from Western lenders that is not in its best interest. It was very shameful that Macron told some people to shut up during the summit in Nairobi. How condescending and ridiculous! Can an African leader do that in Europe or North America? Enough of this imperialism!
Economic historians recall that in 1997, at the height of the Asian financial crisis, the Bretton Woods Institutions, as usual, stepped in and told the Malaysian President, Mahathir Mohammed to accept their conditionalities. Mohammed damned them and insisted that he wouldn’t bow to them. The London-based Economist Magazine blasted Mohammed and regularly pilloried him in their articles and editorials.
Mohammed got to work and got Malaysia out of the crisis with homegrown policies. The Economist was forced to eat their words, and Mohammed was immediately elevated to heroic status.
Africa has a lot to learn from Mahathir Mohammed. Rather than these endless summits, African leaders should look inwards and solve their plethora of challenges with homegrown solutions, as these summits ‘communiques’ are usually in favour of the West.
Enough of the outsourcing of our thinking caps to London and Washington DC as well as the G7! Africa should grow up and stop behaving like Peter Pan.
Enough is Enough!
Tony Ademiluyi is a Lagos-based freelance journalist and writer. He can be reached on 08167677075.
