Accra, Nov. 22, - Africa shall
move beyond aid and its people would work to make the Continent prosperous and
a dynamic member of the world community, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo
has said.
Africa, he said, would get to where
it deserves and would no longer be seen as a "default place to go find
footage to illustrate famine stories."
President Akufo-Addo said this at
an event organised by the Royal Africa Society, Facebook and the Ghana 60 Years
On committee, on the theme; “Africa Beyond Aid,” on Tuesday as part of
activities marking his three-day visit to the United Kingdom.
He said: “We no longer want to
offer the justification for those who want to be rude and abusive about Africa
and her peoples."
"It is time to build our
economies that are not dependent on charity and hand outs… We have learnt from
long and bitter experiences that no matter how generous the charity, we would
and, indeed, we have remained poor,” he said.
President Akufo-Addo was pained
that despite Africa accounting for nearly 30 per cent of the world's remaining
resources, having the world’s second fastest economic growth rates, and being the world's fastest-growing region
for foreign direct investment, the masses of the African peoples remained poor.
With Ghana endowed with natural
resources, the President said: “We can, and we should be able to build a Ghana,
which looks to the use of her own resources and their proper management as the
way to engineer social and economic growth in our country.”
Making reference to the cocoa
industry, he noted that Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, who produced 65 per cent of
the world’s cocoa, made less than six billion dollars from a cocoa industry
that is ‘a 100 billion-dollar industry.’
“If we simply ground and sold the
cocoa in paste form, instead of selling the cocoa beans, we double our
earnings. In much the same way as we would double our earnings from gold, if we
sold it refined, than in its raw state. We are determined to process these
products,” he said.
The President said it was time
African nations put value on their resources by processing them, adding;
"It is time that we, in Africa, manage our resources well, to generate
wealth for our populations.”
President Akufo-Addo stated that
the countries that had made rapid economic strides over the past 20 years had
been the ones that had encouraged high levels of investment in entrepreneur
development.
He said they were the ones that
had promoted and developed a culture of accountable governance free of
corruption, and where institutions of state saw themselves as independent
public entities serving the wider public interest and not the temporary
conveniences of the governments of the day.
“We have a responsibility to make
our countries attractive to our young generation. They should feel they have a
worthwhile future, if they stay and build their nations. We should be, and are
shamed by the desperation that drives a young person to attempt to cross the
Sahara on foot, and the Mediterranean Sea in rickety boats, in the hope of
finding a better future in Europe,” he added.
“We are not disclaiming aid, but
we do want to discard a mind-set of dependency and living on handouts; it is
unhealthy both for the giver and for the receiver.
GNA
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