UNLOCKING AFRICA'S POTENTIAL FOR GROWTH AND PROSPERITY
Speech delivered by Dr. Akinwumi Adesina at the University of Wageningen,
Netherlands, on November 13, 2014.
The Chancellor of the University of Wageningen, my dear friend Professor Louise
Fresco, the Vice Chancellor, my dear friend Professor Martin Kropff, Your Excellencies
the Honorable Ministers of International Development and Foreign Affairs of the
Netherlands, Your Excellency the Nigerian Ambassador to the Netherlands, Your
Excellencies the Ambassadors and Heads of International Organizations, the Executive
Director of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), Faculty members,
students of this eminent university, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. Good
afternoon!
I wish to especially thank the Vice Chancellor for inviting me to deliver today's lecture. I
have always had great admiration for this world-class university. I am delighted to be
back here. You are the pride of Netherlands and you have touched the world, and Africa,
in particular, as so many Africans have been trained, and are still being trained here at the
University of Wageningen. They will become the future leaders of Africa. Dr. Yemi
Akinbamijo, the Executive Director of FARA, who co-organized today's event, is one of
them. He is one of Africa's outstanding agricultural research scholars.
I am proud to be an African. I will be speaking to you today about unlocking the growth
and development potential of my continent. I have been introduced as a Nigerian, which I
am. But let me say that nations are where we were born, Africa is my home. How to
unlock the growth and prosperity potential of Africa is a passion of mine, stretching over
close to 30 years of my career in international development. From my experience living
and working in 15 African countries, across the Sahel, to the highlands of East Africa, the
vast savanna lands of Southern Africa, I have worked passionately to uplift livelihoods of
Africa's poor populations. I have come to realize that one thing is common to all of them:
the need for a new Africa, one with shared prosperity and expanded economic
opportunities for all.
Since the mid-1990s, after two decades of structural adjustment programs, Africa's
economic indicators are growing again. This growth is largely on account of good
macroeconomic fundamentals, improving governance, the surge of mobile and digital
technologies, increasing foreign capital inflows, and improvements in the business
climate. After languishing for decades on the fringes of the global markets, Africa is now
being increasingly integrated into the globalization process. The continent's consumer
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spending is set to rise by 80 percent by 2020, as a fast growing middle class is expected
to increase from 60 million to 100 million people by 2015. Africa has become one of the
world’s top growth areas (5.6% per annum) and is fast becoming an urban, booming
continent, which will soon host 20% of the world’s population. Ten of the African
Union’s 54 member states have a GDP per capita higher than China and as many African
countries shed outdated metrics for calculating their economic output, Africa's collective
GDP is said to be close to $2 trillion. In fact, on a global level, today, seven of the ten
fastest growing economies in the world are in Africa - hence the label "Africa Rising".
But unfortunately this growth is not inclusive. While rising economic indicators are
important, it is not necessarily what changes lives for the better. It is therefore essential
that this growth should translate into tangible benefits that can be felt by majority of our
people.
Africa’s rural economies harbor the greatest share of those being left behind or excluded.
We must therefore ensure that the nature of the new growth in Africa is one that opens up
the rural economies, and by so doing lifts hundreds of millions out of poverty. A totally
revived rural economy must become the new economy of Africa.
Our rural economies are largely dependent on agriculture and reviving them requires a
renewed focus on unleashing the potential of agriculture to create wealth. We must end
the era of prodigal economics, where Africa ignores its own agricultural potential and
turns itself into a net food-importing region. In 2014, the African Progress Panel
estimates that, excluding fish, Africa spends a whopping $35 billion on food imports
annually. Yet, 65% of all available arable land to feed the 9 billion people in the world by
2050 lies in Africa. Years of ignoring Africa’s agricultural potential have turned our rural
areas into dead economic spaces, which we must now revive and utilize to deliver shared
wealth that derives increased economic growth.
To unleash the continent's agricultural potential, African countries need to set a new
vision for agricultural transformation. This new vision must be one that sees agriculture
as a business and not as a development program. This new vision must be focused on
government encouraging and enabling the private sector to invest massively in the
agricultural sector. This new vision for transforming Africa’s agriculture is what I call
“government-enabled private-sector led agricultural transformation agenda”. Under this
new vision, governments must become innovators, developing innovative policies and
institutions that will create and expand opportunities for the private sector, especially
farmers who themselves form the largest private sector in our countries. Agriculture must
be treated as a business.
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These innovative polices must include bold support initiatives that enable farmers to
access the inputs they need to increase their productivity. African governments must not
shy away from supporting their farmers with affordable farm inputs, while at the same
time ensuring that markets work for farmers. Some may argue that supporting farmers in
Africa is not sustainable. I argue that poverty is not sustainable. It is the many years of
neglect of our farmers by governments that has created large numbers of poor farmers
who are unable to compete in the global agricultural space. Africa must not become a
museum of poverty. Poverty is not a tradable commodity nor is it an industry, so Africa
must not grow poverty. The key to "a government-enabled private sector-led agricultural
transformation agenda" is developing ways of effectively targeting support to reach
farmers directly, while ensuring that it is the private sector, and not government, that
delivers farm support to farmers.
This is what we did in Nigeria. When I took office as Minister of Agriculture in 2011, we
ended four decades of fertilizer sector corruption within 90 days and with it the era of
government buying and distributing seeds and fertilizers came to an end. With the
overwhelming support of Nigeria's President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, we replaced a
government centered fertilizer procurement and distribution system with a private sectordriven system. The role of government shifted to providing targeted farm support directly
to farmers for seeds and fertilizers via electronic coupons on mobile phones or “ewallets”. Between 2012 and 2014, a total of 14 million farmers received their subsidized
farm inputs using electronic vouchers on their mobile phones to directly pay private
sector input retailers. Nigeria is the first in the world to develop an electronic wallet
system for the purpose of delivering subsidized inputs directly to its farmers at scale.
Several African counties including Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Ghana are adopting
Nigeria's e-wallet system for distributing subsidized inputs to their farmers. The World
Bank has decided to scale up Nigeria's e-wallet system across Africa.
Nowhere is the impact of these policies more evident than in our drive to become selfsufficient in rice production. Between 2012 and 2014, 6 million rice farmers were
reached with improved rice varieties. Nigeria's total cumulative cultivated rice area rose
by 2 million hectares. National paddy rice production expanded by an additional 7
million MT. Our new rice policy has attracted $1.6 billion of private sector investments,
and we expect that Nigeria will become a net exporter of rice, just like Thailand or India,
within the next four years.
As a result, national food production increased by an additional 21 million MT between
2012 and 2014, surpassing the set target of 20 million MT set for 2015. Nigeria met its
MDG Goal One on hunger and extreme poverty, two years ahead of the 2015 United
Nations target.
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Nigeria’s food import bill declined from $6.9 billion in 2009 to $4.35 billion in
December 2013 and continues to decline. Such is the power of a government-enabled
private sector-led agricultural transformation, when coupled with strong political will and
supportive policies.
To increase the levels of agricultural productivity, farmers require access to affordable
financing. Agricultural financing continues to be a challenge to agricultural
transformation because the main source of credit to farmers is the government.
Governments in most cases are over stretched and are unable to meet the credit need of
farmers. We must therefore unlock new sources of financing for agriculture. With rapid
economic growth in Africa, the pool of funds in the private sector is expanding and
dwarfs public funds. Our banks are awash with cash. With the right financial
mechanisms, such cash can be leveraged and turned into much needed capital flows.
Pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, equity markets and bond markets all offer great
opportunities to deploy financing for development of agriculture infrastructure, roads,
rails and ports and irrigation. We must leverage these resources to create capital flows for
the long term financing for agriculture. To do so, we must de-risk the financial value
chains. Africa is succeeding in doing this. For example, using innovative financing tools,
I led a team few years ago that successfully leveraged banks in Kenya, Tanzania,
Uganda, Ghana and Mozambique to lend over $100 million to small farmers and input
retailers. In Nigeria, I also led the team that designed a $350 million risk sharing facility
of the Central Bank of Nigeria, which leveraged $3.5 billion of lending from the balance
sheets of banks to finance various agricultural value chains. In all these cases, the default
rates by farmers and agribusinesses has been less than 2-3%, and in the case of Nigeria it
has been 0% for the past three years. Governments need to continue to encourage the
development of innovative ways of providing farmers with affordable single-digit interest
rates to further spur growth across Africa's rural areas.
Unlocking Africa's agricultural potential requires a committed drive by the private sector
to mechanize Africa's agriculture. We must face the fact that hoes and cutlasses are
outdated technologies and a continued reliance on them cannot lead to the attainment of
the levels of increased agricultural productivity required to make commercial agro
processing viable. In Nigeria, we have started on the drive to mechanize our agriculture.
About two months ago, President Jonathan launched a $340 million farm mechanization
policy, which will replace hoes and cutlasses with affordable and appropriate modern
farm machinery. In line with our vision for a government-enabled, private sector-led
agricultural transformation, the Nigerian government's agricultural mechanization policy
enables the private sector tractor manufacturers and service operators to establish 1,200
Agricultural Equipment Hiring Enterprises across the country. Government will provide
mechanization grants to farmers via their mobile phones, which they will use to access
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mechanization services from private sector mechanization service operators in their areas.
Mechanizing Africa's agriculture also provides us with the tools to address the problem of
the rapidly ageing population of the farmers on the continent. In many countries, the
average age of farmers is 60 years. As the youth continues to migrate from rural into
urban areas, Africa faces the risk of having no farmers left within 20 years. To avoid this
“ageing farmer crisis" and take decisive policy steps to get the youth into agriculture,
Nigeria has established the Youth Employment in Agriculture Program. It's goal: develop
750,000 new cadres of young commercial farmers and agribusiness entrepreneurs over
the next five years. They will be supported with access to technical and business skills,
access to land and affordable finance and market development support systems. We must
make agriculture exciting for the youth. Agriculture can be "cool".
Ladies and gentlemen, Africa is today the continent with the largest share of youth in its
population. Close to 70% of the population of Africa is under the age of 30 years, while
21% of its population is between the age of 15 and 24 years, and 42% is below the age of
15 years. As the rest of the developed world experiences a shrinking youth population
due to low birth rates, Africa’s high birth rate is leading to a massive demographic
transition. But Africa's youth also make up 60% of the continent's unemployed
population. This combination of increasing unemployment and an increasing youth
population is lethal, and some have referred to it has "the ticking bomb of Africa's youth
unemployment".
I, on the other hand, get excited about Africa's growing youth population. In the hands of
such a youthful population, my vision of a government-enabled private sector-driven
transformation goes beyond the agricultural sector. With governments leading the way by
developing innovative policies and institutions to create and expand opportunities for the
private sector, not only in agriculture, but across all sectors, Africa's large youth
population suddenly moves from being "a ticking bomb" to becoming the largest labor
force the world has ever seen.
Today, rather than being an asset, the story is different. Most of the continent's youth are
underemployed, lack decent jobs and engage mostly in the informal sector, with low
wages, or as unpaid family labor. Tens of thousands of Africa’s youth, excluded from the
economic growth process, and some escaping political conflicts, take to the deadly trips
across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe or the Sahara desert, in search of economic
opportunities. Socially discontent youths fueled riots in Tunisia, Egypt, South Africa,
Nigeria, and more recently in Burkina Faso. Over 50% of the youths that were involved
in the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone did so because of unemployment.
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We must create hope and opportunities for Africa's youth. For the urban youth,
investments should prioritize reducing labor market rigidities, use of labor market
employment incentives to create demand for labor in the private sector and provide work
experience for unemployed youths, reducing skills mismatch, development of
entrepreneurship, use of internships, and improving the curriculum in universities and
colleges to focus on skills required in the labor market. Vocational and apprenticeship
skills should also be promoted. Investments are also needed to expand insurance, health
and social housing programs that specifically target the youth.
To address the unemployment among the rural youth, focus should be on using
agriculture to create a massive amounts of jobs, which I have earlier indicated, requires
the rapid modernization of agriculture, promotion of mechanized farms, expansion of
small and medium sized agribusinesses in rural areas and rural non-farm employment
opportunities. The development of large infrastructure-enabled skills enhancement zones,
through public private partnerships, that provide young graduates with exposure to skills
demanded in the labor market, will offer them wider opportunities to enter the labor
market or create jobs for themselves. The development of venture capital funds can be
used to encourage entrepreneurship among the youth. Progress should be accelerated to
expand the representation of the youth in parliaments, training and engagement of the
youth in public policy dialogues to ensure political accountability and the use of quotas
for enhancing political participation of the youth at all levels of political institutions.
Greater focus should be placed on programs that expand the participation of girls in
schools, especially in sciences, engineering and information and communication
technologies. Affirmative labor market policies are required to raise labor market
participation for women. To encourage financial independence and self-employment for
young women, financial incentives should be promoted to provide affordable finance for
small and medium scale enterprises. An affirmative finance action for women is needed
and at least 35% of all loans by commercial banks should be specifically dedicated to
SMEs owned and operated by women. Investment in women pays!
But the potential, dynamism, innovation and labor locked in Africa's youth cannot be
unleashed until Africa tackles its infrastructure gap, especially its energy deficit, as only
5% of the rural areas and 50% of urban areas have electricity.
Africa, with over 1.5 billion people, generates power equal to that of Spain with a
population of 45 million. Only 42% of Africans have access to electricity compared to
75% in all developing countries. The situation is much worse in Sub-Saharan Africa,
where 30% of the population has access to electricity. Africa has an installed energy
capacity of just 147 GW, the same as Belgium. The average Nigerian, who uses 136
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KWH per year, consumes just 5 percent of the average energy a Chinese citizen
consumes and under a quarter of the energy an average Indian consumes. Yet Africa has
over 50% of the world’s renewable energy, including wind, geothermal, solar and
hydropower sources. For example, Africa has a potential of 20,000 MW of geothermal
but only 130 MW is being used, mainly in Kenya (150 MW) and Ethiopia (7.3 MW).
Africa currently uses only 8% of its hydropower potential compared to Western Europe
that uses 85% of its hydropower sources.
Africa must rapidly unlock its capacity in renewable energy. Kenya is building the
world’s largest geothermal plant in the Rift valley, as well as the largest wind farm in
Africa. Algeria is building its capacity to become a solar power net exporter by 2030.
Morocco already has an installed wind power production capacity of 495 MW, with more
than 800 MW of capacity under construction.
Solving Africa’s energy needs will require rapidly increasing power generation,
transmission and distribution. A mix of energy sources will be needed, and the challenge
is to get the right balance between renewable energy and fossil fuels to power Africa.
Because of the high cost of transmission of electricity, a mix of grid, mini-grid and offgrid is required. There should be focus on development of large regional power projects
that can generate electricity for several countries. The great Inga dam in the Democratic
Republic of Congo, with a capacity to generate 40,000 MW, is more than enough to light
up 60% of Africa. This potential should be unlocked rapidly, while paying attention to
environmental safeguard issues. Such regional power projects are needed to provide
energy for several countries. Regional power pools are necessary to help overcome the
small size of national energy markets. South Africa, for example, has signed on to play
the role of a "reliable purchaser" of electricity to be generated by the Inga dam project.
Expanding regional energy markets and promoting intra-Africa energy trade lowers
power investment costs and improve the rates of returns on energy investments.
Investments in regional power transmission lines to connect countries will allow easier
and cost effective evacuation of electricity across borders. The Central Transmission
Corridor connects Mozambique power supply to Namibia and Angola. In East Africa, the
Kenya-Zambia-Tanzania interconnector supports power transmission across the
countries. The “ZiZaBoNa connector” will evacuate power generated from the Victoria
Falls and distribute this through a 300 kilometers of 330 KV lines that links Zimbabwe
and Zambia to landlocked Botswana and Namibia. In West Africa, regional energy
infrastructure includes the Nigeria-Benin coastal transmission backbone, while the NorthSouth power transmission lines links Egypt to South Africa, connecting 11 countries. The
North Africa transmission line links Morocco to Egypt.
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But all the above examples of energy investments, though laudable, are still a drop in the
bucket. Africa would need close to $550 billion by 2030 to finance its energy needs.
Innovative finance will be critical to reducing risks facing investors. Like we have
pioneered in agriculture, African countries will have to innovate with the use of credit
guarantees, risk insurance and debt financing in preparing the bankable projects
necessary to leverage the capital needed to boost Africa’s energy supply.
The Africa 50 Fund of the African Development Bank is a laudable initiative, targeted at
leveraging capital markets in Africa to finance Africa’s infrastructure needs, including
regional and national projects on energy, transport, ICT and water. This should be
strongly supported. For it is Africa's own homegrown solution, tapping into its financial
capital markets, to meet its energy and infrastructure challenges.
The Power Africa Initiative, launched by the US President Barak Obama, plans to add an
additional 30,000 MW of power to the energy supply in six African countries and
improve access to electricity for at least 60 million households. Private sector investment
commitment under the initiative has exceeded $20 billion, including new initiatives that
support off-grid small-scale energy solutions that can expand access to electricity to
remote areas of the continent. The Power Africa Initiative is an excellent example of
government-enabled private sector led transformation agenda in Africa.
Even as Africa addresses these challenges, its growth trajectory is being challenged by
the recent Ebola disease outbreak in West Africa. The epidemic has dampened the growth
prospects for Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. The outbreak, the worst in the continent,
has led to high mortality of 2,750 deaths in Liberia, 1,259 in Sierra Leone and 904 deaths
in Guinea so far. The economies of these countries have experienced a decline in growth,
as farming, tourism, financial markets and service industries have been seriously affected.
While these countries posted strong economic growth rates before the Ebola crisis, the
IMF estimates show that the GDP of the affected countries will decline by over $380
million. The World Bank estimates the regional financial impact could reach $32.6
billion by 2015.
Ladies and gentlemen, Africa will end the Ebola crisis. The success of Nigeria in rapidly
containing the pandemic has given impetus to the political leaders, that with strong
political will and rapid response, the epidemic can be contained. But the rapid spread of
Ebola virus is a wake up call that has exposed decades of underinvestment in public
health systems in many parts of Africa. Lack of doctors, health care workers, inadequate
numbers of diagnostic centers and quarantine centers, have hampered the speed of
response to the virus. The response of the global community, while late in coming, has
risen as virus infection cases were reported in Spain and the United States of America.
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The heroes of the frontline battle have been the resilient communities, health care
workers who put their lives at risk, including local and foreign doctors from the Medicine
Sans Frontiers, and foreign personnel dispatched from US, Europe, Cuba and Nigeria to
provide much needed medical support and build new quarantine centers. The lesson from
the Ebola pandemic is that Africa needs to significantly expand its investments in health
care systems, especially the primary health care systems in rural areas. A lot more
resources should be devoted to constructing more treatment and quarantine centers,
developing vaccines, cheap diagnostic tools for rapid diagnosis.
Despite the challenges, Africa will recover from the Ebola pandemic, as African leaders
are showing strong political will across countries, but it will require significant amounts
of aid. The African Development Bank and the World Bank have committed over $700
million in support, including an additional $300 million in low interest commercial loans
from the International Finance Corporation. Africa is also doing its part. Just last week at
the Africa Union in Addis Ababa, leading African business organizations pledged $28.5
million to a fund to fight the Ebola outbreak. Foreign donors can also help affected
countries with aid to provide fiscal buffers, reduce budget deficits, lower their debt
exposure, rebuild their public health care systems, as well as lower interest and long term
commercial loans to address trade, investment and employment challenges. Africa is
resilient, and Africa will arise.
Africa will rise further and reduce inequalities across countries by boosting intra-regional
trade. Africa needs to trade more with itself. Compared to the rest of the world, interAfrica trade accounts for only 12%, compared to 65% in the European Union and 49% in
the North America and 25% in Southeast Asian countries. Greater intra-Africa trade will
foster regional integration, expand market size, spur greater investments in infrastructure
and provide the building blocks needed to enhance Africa’s participation and
competitiveness in global markets. Improving regional transport infrastructure, especially
transnational highways, ports and aviation facilities and improved logistics, will open up
African economies and enhance movement of people, goods and services.
But much still needs to be done to ensure a level playing field on the global market to
allow Africa to increase its current very low global market share of 2.5%. Africa cannot
finance its growth based on aid, neither should it aspire to. What is needed for even faster
growth is to boost Africa’s share of global trade. This can be achieved by lowering trade
barriers in developed countries. Africa can effectively position itself for expanded trade
by strengthening diversification of its exports, moving up on global value chains,
reducing tariff and non-tariff barriers, promoting trade facilitation, expanding traderelated infrastructure and boosting trade finance. In the transport sector, there is need to
expand and upgrade selected trade corridors and road networks; invest in highways, ports
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and border-crossing facilities; and build one-stop border posts along major corridors.
Ladies and gentlemen, Africa must move up the global value chains and focus on
manufacturing and higher value added processing for its commodities, instead of
exporting raw materials. Nowhere is the need for this more poignant than in the case of
cocoa. While farmers in Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria produce over 70% of
the cocoa beans globally, West Africa accounts for only 18 percent of all grindings, while
Europe and the US account for over 70% of all grindings. In a recent book about the
global chocolate market, West Africa is barely mentioned. The same applies if you take
the tour of the Cadbury museum in Bourneville, England, even though two thirds of the
cocoa in the company’s chocolates comes from West Africa. With the global market for
chocolate estimated to be over $80 billion per year, Africans buy chocolates in Europe,
but Africa gets a meager 3-5% of the price of a bar of chocolate. Africa should be
producing chocolates.
A new global phenomenon, climate change, is affecting Africa. For millions of children
their hope of a better Africa is being challenged by climate change. While Africa
contributes less than 4% of global green house emissions, compared to 38% in OECD
countries and 25% in China, it suffers disproportionately from the negative effects. With
the scorching heat, African children watch their parents’ farms shrivel from increased
droughts. The Sahelian countries have not been spared. They lose their livestock, often
the main store of asset and incomes that provide buffers against shocks, pay their medical
bills and send them to school. Not only is the climate changing, their lives are changing
and their economic opportunities are shrinking.
The global responsibility to address climate change is one of social and climate justice as
well as a moral imperative. The principle of "joint but differentiated responsibility" for
addressing climate change requires that the world reduce global emissions to less than
5% of the levels of 1990s. While the developed countries have had several decades to
grow, expand and develop technological innovations that now allow them to move
towards a low carbon economy, African countries don't have that luxury. They must
address mitigation and adaptation simultaneously, and with urgency, to reduce the
vulnerability climate change poses to their economies.
Africa needs significant amount of resources to finance adaptation to climate and reduce
vulnerabilities of its population. But Africa is not getting those resources at the scale
needed. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), set up to finance meeting the set
carbon emissions reduction targets in the developed economies, through offsets of
emissions in developing countries, has yet to benefit much of Africa. Of the over $400
billion in financed projects in 2000-2014, only 2 percent has been in Africa.
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Over 80 percent of the carbon reduction credits have gone to India and China, focusing
mainly on industrial emissions and energy. The CDMs support mitigation, which helps
developed countries, but not adaptation, the primary challenge of Africa. Africa needs to
address climate change adaptation and build resilience, with expanded investments in
drought and flood tolerant crops, crop and livestock insurance, irrigation, improved land
use management with agroforestry and zero tillage systems. Carbon bonds can be used to
raise financing in Africa to support farmers’ sustainable intensification and sequestration
of carbon through avoided deforestation and expansion of carbon sinks. On the path from
Rio to France, on the long journey for addressing climate change, climate adaptation
needs of Africa must be on the top of the agenda.
But Africa must develop with pride. Africa must mobilize its domestic resources through
better tax collecting and smart leveraging of remittances through instruments such as
Diaspora bonds. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa,
remittances from the African diaspora is estimated at over $60 billion, second only to
foreign direct investment. The World Bank estimates that remittance flows to subSaharan Africa is estimated to grow to $41 billion by 2016. This is on par with Official
Development Assistance to sub-Saharan Africa in 2014, according to the ONE Campaign
2014 Data Report. As India and Israel have successfully done, several African countries
with large Diaspora communities are now posting Diaspora bonds - which are essentially
a form of government debt targeted at citizens living abroad with emotional and financial
ties to their countries or regions of birth. Also, the total size of assets under management
by Pension Funds in Africa now totals over $379 billion. With appropriate reforms,
Pension funds in Africa could potentially deploy up to $35 billion annually for
investment in private equities to support long-term capital needs for Africa’s
development.
So, ladies and gentlemen, Africa is not a poor continent, it just happens to have a lot of
poor people. We must transition the poor into wealth and create economic ladders of
opportunities. We must therefore, not only improve the private capital stocks for Africa;
we must rapidly build Africa’s social capital stocks. We must work to improve Africa’s
development outcomes, strengthen economic, social and political systems, and build an
enduring Africa – prosperous, peaceful and stable. An Africa that is united and regionally
integrated. An Africa that is globally competitive; a place of hope, opportunities, liberties
and freedom, with shared prosperity for all. An Africa, Africans are proud to call home.
An Africa, open to the world. An Africa, the place to be!
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