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Africa needs to develop its own resources, advises Ngwenya

Africa needs to develop its own resources, advises Ngwenya
Written by Kabanda Chulu
Wednesday, December 31, 2008 9:56:06 AM

AFRICA needs to develop its own resources
to claim the 21st Century, COMESA secretary general Sindiso Ngwenya has said.

And Ngwenya said the tripartite agreement among the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) and the East African Community (EAC) would culminate in establishing a single ‘Cape to Cairo’ free trade area.

In an interview to review the successes and challenges during 2008, Ngwenya said the COMESA institutions were moving in the right direction.

“Firstly, our former boss Erastus Mwencha was appointed deputy chairman at AU headquarters and this showed how COMESA is respected by people and we have continued to grow from strength to strength with support from our independent institutions that are supporting governments and the private sector in many countries,” Ngwenya said. “But for Africa to claim the 21st century, the continent needs to develop its own resources, which are in abundance but the challenge is to become practical by adding value to all raw materials that would result in job creation as well as enhancing economic development.”

He said COMESA and Cliffton Packaging of the United Kingdom had signed an agreement to establish centres of excellence where packaging and branding training would be provided.

“Early next year, COMESA will be launching the Build Africa by Africans’ concept (BABA) in order to address the inadequacies of value addition, branding and packaging so that our exporters can compete effectively at international markets,” Ngwenya said.

“We need to be practical and add value to what we produce. For example, with maize we only think of nshima but there are many things that can be made out of maize, things like corn flakes, corn puffs and corn snacks and since we don’t add value to materials like coffee, our producers just make about US $10 million in annual exports but when instant coffee is made, billions of dollars are realised and imagine if these funds were in the pockets of our producers.”

Some COMESA independent institutions that support governments and the private sectors include the PTA Bank, ZEP RE, which is a leading provider of reinsurance to several insurance companies. ZEP RE, despite being a COMESA institution also serves non-COMESA members and it is rated ‘AA’ for national and ‘BBB’ for international businesses.

Other institutions are the African Trade Insurance (ATI), which provides coverage of political risks, and so far, it has issued insurance policies worth US $400 million in seven countries.

And the African Development Bank (AfDB) would soon avail US $50 million financing to the COMESA Leather and leather Products Institute based in Ethiopia, to improve the quality of products. It is estimated that 47 per cent of livestock in Africa is found within the COMESA region.

And Ngwenya said COMESA would continue hosting investment conferences outside the region in order to attract foreign direct investment (FDI).

“We have formed a Regional Investment Agency (RIA), whose objective is to promote the entire region as a favourable investment destination, and last November, we had a conference in Belgium and another conference is planned for Qatar next year. All these are measures to attract FDI,” he said.

He said the Customs Union that was supposed to be launched this month had been put on hold and would be launched next year based on the framework of the tripartite agreement signed by the three regional economic groupings.

“The agreement among COMESA, SADC and the EAC has changed the economic geography of the regions because what was a dream will now become reality because we will have ‘Cape to Cairo’ free trade area that will become a model to develop and integrate the African continent,” said Ngwenya.

Labels: BABA, COMESA, DEVELOPMENT, SINDISO NGWENYA

posted by MrK @ 9:55 AM