Sumaye: Help African countries to build own economy through investments

Former Prime Minister, Frederick Sumaye has called upon global development partners to take a close look on how to help African countries improve its economy by investing in its rich natural resources. It has been learnt. Sumaye made the plea yesterday in his key note address at the 10^th Annual International Development Conference held at Harvard Kennedy School-Harvard University in USA, the school where he had studied his Masters Degree six years ago. The Conference discussed issues under the theme titled, “The Wrong Way? Forging New Paths for development”, focussed various ways on how some continents especially Africa missed targets in its development schedules and how the poorest suffers in global economy. In his speech a copy of which has been made available to the Guardian on Sunday, Sumaye has described how Africa lost its development targets from the time of its scramble when the Berlin agreement of partitioning the region came into being in 1884. In view of this, Sumaye has called upon the international development partners to stand firm to help the continent regain its prosperity by investing on its natural resources. He noted that, Africa started to lose its control of economny during the during the cold war when the major political blocks, the capitalist and communist blocks, each was trying to get as many as possible of newly independent states of Africa on each ones side.  This culminated into many countries acquiring an economic and security dependence on the respective block, but in some cases countries ended up in complete civil strives that took decades to settle with huge costs to the economy and human lives.  Another cause of the continent’s economic backwardness is the scramble for its natural resources which can turn into a curse or an economic boom depending on the ability of African leadership to handle it to the benefit of their countries and people.  “Naturally people scramble because there is something substantial for them to gain”,  he said adding that, all these scrambles for Africa resulted into total exploitation of Africa or derailed African countries from their normal course of development and in some cases plunged countries into total chaos and civil wars.  Most of these scrambles are now history to many countries in Africa and there are many positive trends of development.  The economies of many countries are growing at encouraging rates of above the world average rate. But poverty is still persistent in literally all the countries of Africa due to various factors that need to be overcome, some urgently, some overtime. 

Former Tanzania Prime Minister, Frederick Sumaye.

Giving an example in Tanzania, a fairly vast country in East Africa with a population of about 45 million inhabitants the major exports comprise of agricultural commodities like coffee, cashew nuts, cotton, tea and tobacco. Others are flowers etc and minerals including gold, diamonds, uranium, bauxite and precious gemstones like Tanzanite including a large wildlife tourist potential unparalleled anywhere on the continent and probably on the planet. Despite having all these huge potential but the country is poor and its people are also poor and this is not unique to Tanzania alone but rather a case of Africa region. He queried whether Africa might have gone wrong or the right way, and it has to look into these components individually or in related groupings.  “We will probably find that in some cases we are on the right track while in others we are on the wrong path and we need to turn back or realign our direction to get us on the right track of sustainable development” he said. There is also a realization that a lot of our most serious problems confronting African countries are there because those touched most by such problems are left out in the process of dealing with the problems. However, sumaye has noted down some of the most key components of development for which Africa has to look at critically. These are among others the Economic development and wealth creation, the disparity between men and women. In the case of Africa for instance, Sumaye noted that women are traditionally Bread makers of the family they are the producers of food and income generators for the family. They do about 70 – 80 percent of the work load. Furthermore, they look after the children, do all the domestic chores of fetching water, collecting firewood cooking etc and do the back breaking activities using inefficient traditional work tools. Another is unfair International Trade regime in the sense that, the developing countries do not effectively make money to increase wealth into their countries due to two reasons; one, these countries’ products cannot effectively compete in the world markets due to various reasons including quality and quantities of their products; and two, due to unfair trading patterns.  These include illegal trade barriers and other protectionist policies favouring their local and home made products. The industries in developing countries are far less developed and most of times using outdated technologies that are inefficient and not cost effective making the products so produced to be uncompetitive and expensive. Another is the political stability and security, this is a very necessary ingredients for any successful development to take place. This is not a serious problem now in Africa compared to the past although there are still some countries where peace is farfetched.  These trouble spots are not many but still cause a lot of concern to the African Union and to other countries particularly those who are neighbours. Lastly Sumaye mentioned Technological advancement, noting that is impacting every human activity and is producing unprecedented outcomes. Advances in technology are now important components in running of governments, businesses and other human activities.