AfDB to support Nigeria, others on industrial policy, task CSO on leadership

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has said that it will support five countries with industrial policies to help boost development in the region. Mr Alhassane Haidara, Manager, Industrial Development said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abidjan. He named the five countries to include Nigeria, Senegal, Ethiopia, Morrocco and Algeria.

Meanwhile the Bank has called on various Civil Society Orgainisations (CSOs) working in Africa to drive every effort to ensure Africa’s  Industrialisation. Mr Celestin Monga, the Bank’s Vice President and Chief Economist made the call at the opening ceremony of the Civil Society Forum in Abidjan. The Theme of the Forum is “Engaging Civil Society in Accelerating Africa’s Industrialisation’’.

He said Africa as a continent had many deficiencies that contributed to its inability to develop as a rich continent. He noted deficiency of learning and knowledge, Leadership, conflict resolution corruption among others as major problem in the region. He challenged the CSOs to show intellectual curiosity in matters concerning Africa to drive its industrialisation.

“Vietnam Presently is doing well, if they continue what they are doing right now, by the next 10 years, we will all gather to be discussing about their success story. You know how the country was destroyed, but they have stood up to go and find out where such has happened and how to solve their problem and they are yielding results. There is nothing happening in Africa that has not happened elsewhere and was resolved, so, all CSOs must find a way to save Africa,’’ he said He noted that though it was difficult to have excellent leaders, CSOs remained major source of credible leaders across the world.

“We need leaders from CSOs who are credible to bring good governance in the region because CSO as an institution is where great leadership for economic and social development are taken,’’ he added Monga said that culture of good conflict resolution should also be adopted in the region rather than blown out of proportion as always was the case in Africa. He added that CSOs remained fundamental for the growth and development in Africa and solving the problems of African region.

He assured that the bank would continue to work with CSOs to ensure common values to ethics and urged them to go beyond engaging with bank and engage more with the private sector. According Mr Alhassane Haidara the bank in partnership with UNIDO will help the countries in developing policies that will drive industrial development in various sectors of the economy. This, he said would go a long way to boost economic development and increase Foreign Direct investment. He said the bank would also through the policies  support capital markets by boosting the market liquidity.

He added that the policies would support the growth of Small businesses adding that industrial clusters would be established in all the five regions in Africa. “ This project is going to be in a pilot scheme, if we are successful with the five countries, we will replicate in many other countries in the region,’’ he said. The theme for the bank’s 2018 Annual meeting  is “Industrialising Africa’’ The Annual meeting will be held in Busan, Korea from May 21st to 25th. The theme is one of the high fives priority projects of the bank which majorly focused on how best to transform Africa.