2019 CEO AFRICA ROUNDTABLE Kandeh Kolleh Yumkella, Ph.D. United Nations Under-Secretary-General (2013-2015) SRSG & CEO - Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) Initiative (2013-2015) Director-General - UN Industrial Development Organization (2005 -2013) ELEPHANT HILLS RESORT VICTORIA FALLS February 13-15, 2019
Africa Rising: Political Leaders make the weather TURNING AFRICAN ECONOMY INTO COMPETITIVE POWER HOUSES
Selected Declarations over 4 Decades The Lagos Plan of Action The Abuja Treaty The Minimum Integration Programme The Programme for Infrastructural Development in Africa (PIDA) The Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) The New partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Regional Plans and Programmes and National Plans etc. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Several UN resolutions concerning economic development; the most recent being Resolution A/Res/70/293 proclaiming 2016- 2025 as “the Third Industrial Development Decade for Africa (IDDA- III)”.
Africa: Learning From Our Past: The Era of Disease, Disaster and Death
The Coming Anarchy: “How scarcity, crime, overpopulation, tribalism, and disease are rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet” February 1994, The Atlantic Magazine https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/02/the-coming- anarchy/304670/
"Does Africa have some inherent factors that keeps it underdeveloped?
Paul Collier, 2007: The Bottom Billion: “Why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it”, Oxford University press” Collier describes about 60 of the poorest countries of the world He calls AFRICA+ and states: “the countries at the bottom coexist With the 21 st century, but their reality is the 14 century: civil war, Plague, ignorance is their reality. Dambisa Moyo, 2009: Dead Aid – Why Aid is not working and how There is another way for Africa ? (Penguin Book, 2009).
AFRICA: Missed Out on the Greatest Period of Global Prosperity in Human History ROW GLOBALIZATION Fastest Growth in the decades Global out put increased to $53.3 trillion by 2007 Global trade increased 133% China lifted 500 million people out of poverty - Poverty increased by 93million - Ghana 1975 GDP contracted by 12% Inflation rose by 30% and AFRICA 116% by 1977
Constraints on Africa’s Socio -Economic Development Ali Mazrui, 1981 – Garden of Eden Syndrome Jared Diamond, 1977- Geographic Determinism Paul Collier, 2005 – The Poverty Traps : Conflict being land locked, abundant natural recourses, bad Governance. Dambisa Moyo, 2007 – Aid Dependency -Aid represented as much as 90% of net disbursements, 1987 – 1996 for some countries Paul Kagame 2007 “ The primary reason (that there is little to show for the more than US$300 billion of aid that has gone to Africa since 1970) is that in the context of post-Second World War geopolitical and strategic rivalries and economic interests, much of the aid was spent creating and sustaining client regimes and one type or the other with minimal regards to developmental outcomes on our continent”. ( Time Magazine, September 2007).
Africa: The Era of Hope and Opportunity A continent of Hope, Opportunity and Transformation (HOT) reflects how I feel about Africa. My BELIEF: Despite its many challenges, I BELIEVE we can transform our continent into a region made up of modern, industrialized, digitized and wealthy economies where people live in dignity and are respected by the rest of the world.
After decades of slow growth, Africa has a real chance to follow in the footsteps of Asia Dec 3rd 2011 Over the past decade six of the world's ten fastest- growing countries were African. In eight of the past ten years, Africa has grown faster than East Asia, including Japan. Even allowing for the knock-on effect of the northern hemisphere's slowdown, the IMF expects Africa to grow by 6% this year and nearly 6% in 2012, about the same as Asia. The commodities boom is partly responsible. In 2000- 08 around a quarter of Africa's growth came from higher revenues from natural resources. Favourable demography is another cause. With fertility rates crashing in Asia and Latin America, half of the increase in population over the next 40 years will be in Africa. But the growth also has a lot to do with the manufacturing and service economies that African countries are beginning to develop. The big question is whether Africa can keep that up if demand for commodities drops. December 2011 http://www.economist.com/node/21541015
Pride in Africa’s achievements should be coupled with the determination to make even faster progress March 2 nd 2013 CELEBRATIONS are in order on the poorest continent. Never in the half-century since it won independence from the colonial powers has Africa been in such good shape. Its economy is flourishing. Most countries are at peace. Ever fewer children bear arms and record numbers go to school. Mobile phones are as ubiquitous as they are in India and, in the worst-affected countries, HIV infections have fallen by up to three-quarters. Life expectancy rose by a tenth in the past decade and foreign direct investment has tripled. Consumer spending will almost double in the next ten years; the number of countries with average incomes above $1,000 per person a year will grow from less than half of Africa’s 55 states to three -quarters. http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21572773- pride-africas-achievements-should-be-coupled- determination-make-even-faster
Boniface Mwangi’s first camera was an old Japanese film model, bought with $220 borrowed from a friend. He’d been selling books at his mother’s roadside stall in Nairobi since he was 15. Then one day in 2003 he came across a biography of Kenyan photographer Mohamed Amin, whose pictures of the 1984 Ethiopian famine, the book implied, led to Band Aid, Live Aid and a new era of global humanitarianism. “That book opened a new world for me,” says Mwangi. “Here was another high school dropout who went on to conquer the world using his camera.” Mwangi set out to do the same. Within months his photographs were being published in Kenya, and in a year he had won a national award for Best New Photographer. His inches-close pictures of the tribal bloodletting that followed a disputed 2007 general-election result in Kenya earned him a slew of awards, a letter from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praising his “incredible talent” and a grant from the New York City — based Magnum Foundation. For many, the story of the street hawker who became a world-class photographer seemed to epitomize the notion of an emerging Africa: a giant continent awakening from poverty and disaster, now bursting with hope and opportunity. http://www.alex-perry.com/africa-rising/
The Wall Street Journal calls it “ a new gold rush .” – January 12,2011 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704720804576009 672053184168#project%3DAFRICAMAP0111%26articleTabs%3Dinter active The Financial Times names it “ Africa calling ” - March 10, 2013 https://www.ft.com/content/8968cbee-7f45-11e2-89ed- 00144feabdc0 A McKinsey Global report dubbed growing African countries “lions on the move,” - http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/middle-east- and-africa/lions-on-the-move Forbes magazine - Africa Is Rising Fast, November 9, 2012 https://www.forbes.com/sites/techonomy/2012/11/09/africa-is- rising-fast/#3318db4
The New Narrative – What Changed? o Improved Political Climate |Macroeconomic Stability |Microeconomic Reforms We proved that we can liberalize, we could shed the yoke of military juntas, and we can start the process of creating democratic institutions. Some of the harsh lessons learned about fiscal discipline and monetary policy stabilization imposed by structural adjustments Programmes was beginning to pay off. The result was that by 2010: o Africa's growth acceleration was widespread, with 27 of the 30 largest economies expanding more rapidly after 2000 o total foreign capital flows rose from $15 billion in 2000 to a peak of $87 billion by 2007, o the rate of return on foreign investment was higher in Africa than any other developing region o we witnessed the rise of the African urban consumer; for example by 2010, 40 per cent of Africans lived in urban areas, a portion close to China's.
“(Africa) hangs in the balance, They’ve certainly been left behind in that they are the poorest continent, even though they’ve had a good 20 years by many measures. It hangs in the balance of how much catch-up will do it-they could also fall further behind. Africa is unique in that it still has significant population growth … .These babies are (being) born in the toughest places in the world. ” (Gates interview with Paul Schemm, 11/2/2019).
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