As Africa and the rest of the world gradually emerge from the throes of the Coronavirus, the Chairman of the United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc, Tony Elumelu, has stated that the pandemic presents African countries with an opportunity to reset the continent.
This, he said will empower African countries to be more productive and self-reliant. Elumelu canvassed this position t at a high-level Roundtable discussion organized by the New York Forum Institute, and had African leaders such as President Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger; President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya; President Alassane Ouattara of Cote d’Ivoire; President Macky Sall of Senegal and President Julius Bio of Sierra Leone.
Others in attendance included former Nigeria’s Minister of finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo – Iweala who is a Special Envoy of the African Union on Covid-19 and Tidjane Thiam who is also a Special Envoy responsible for mobilizing international economic support for Africa.
Speaking during a session titled ‘Resilient World: An African call for a new world order’, Elumelu advocated that Africa as a continent has all it takes to emerge as a strong digital economy.
“I see this pandemic as an opportunity to reset Africa. I feel that as we engage the rest of the world in providing relief, we need to look for a more fundamental solution to Africa’s challenges. I have often argued for martial plan overtime. We need to mobilize everyone. If we have a martial plan that mobilizes resources to address particular issues, then we can mitigate against this constant begging for assistance,” he said.
The UBA Chairman further stated that Africa as a continent should start this process by fixing access to electricity and ensuring a stable macro-economic environment, amongst others.
“The truth is that we have resources to help mobilize people. As the founder of the Tony Elumelu Foundation, we are committed to endow $100m to support young African entrepreneurs and we have been seeing the positive results this has yielded so far. It is evident that if we can fix access to electricity, ensure the stability of the macro-economic environment, ensure prioritization of the youth, empower our small and medium scale enterprises and fix youth migration, then we are in for a better and more resilient economy’. There is an urgent need to prioritize our youths and empower our SMEs. The people who work hard need to be encouraged,” Elumelu canvassed.
His position was supported by Tidjane Thiam who added that the time for governments and institutions to invest in activities that will prioritize the youths and create a better enabling environment is now. This, he said will only be possible by promoting a class of entrepreneurs to drive the African economy.
“I agree with Tony Elumelu. The major challenge is that we do not see enough entrepreneurs. Similar to what obtains in Asia and Europe, there is the need to promote a class of Entrepreneurs to drive the African economy. We need to groom more Tony Elumelus’ from Africa’ We know what needs to be done. We need government and multinational institutions to bring in the capital so that there will be an investment in health, infrastructure, and the like. We do need to get rid of this debt cycle because constant rescheduling and begging for relief for debts is not good for us as a continent,” Thiam said.
On her part, Okonjo-Iweala canvassed a system where youths and women will be empowered to drive production which in turn will help boost the African economy.
“As Tony pointed out, we can see this pandemic as an opportunity for the continent. We have the African Free Trade Agreement, and we have to make it real.
“We have to specialize our countries to manufacture the things we need so we can trade with others. We need to produce good jobs for our young people. We need to empower our women and youths and put them at the center. It is said that Africa would have the largest number of youths in the world by 2050, so we need to fix this”, she noted.
