African countries must align Industrial policies with continent’s integration process – Economist

Director of Economic Affairs, African Union Commission Dr Rene Kouassi said industrialisation policy of African countries must align with integration process of the continent to ensure inclusive growth in the region. Kouassi made the suggestion at a workshop to start the 7th AU- ECA Joint Annual Meeting in Abuja Nigeria.

“Africa in the last 10 years has witnessed economic growth which has not transformed the region because we are yet to industrialise. This is because many countries in Africa make industrialisation policy without considering how it will affect their neighbouring countries. Any industrialisation policy of any African country must align to integration process of the continent so that we can achieve positive growth,” he said.

According to him, Nigeria’s industrialisation policy must take advantage of ECOWAS region to enable products from Nigeria to get into markets in Mali, Ghana and other African markets. He said inter-country trade would bring about competition among other development factors. Kouassi said it was unfortunate that countries in Africa dumped the African Union industrialisation policy adopted in Kingshasha in 1996.

“The first AU industrialisation policy was in the 1980s and the second in 1990s, why are they not adopted? Africa has remained the least industrialised continent in the world. And if we continue like the way we are going, we cannot achieve inclusive growth. We need to be industrialised to create inclusive growth, if we are not industrialised, we can never be an emerging continent,” he said.

Mr Hopestone Chavula of Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) said effort must be made for better planning process that would bring inclusive growth in the continent.

He said the summit would focus on ways to ensure better economic growth for the continent to reduce poverty rate. He called for transformation in the agricultural sector as well as productive and service sectors. These sectors, he said would bring about jobs and help to impact on the lives of many citizens of various countries.

“African countries are yet to deploy finances to areas of higher productivity, Asia moved its finances from lower production sectors to higher production sectors and they transformed tremendously. Africa has not done that, our resources are moved to areas that are not able to move the continent,” he said. He called for active collaboration between the government and the private sector to drive economic growth in the continent.