By Anderson Ojwang
Despite the African continent being endowed with vast wealth, the ability to transform this opportunity has been negated by a lack of economic literacy.
Incoming Secretary General of the United Cities and Local Governments of Africa (UCGLA) Dr Francois Menguele said.
He said population is the basis of wealth creation and it’s unfortunate that 90 percent of the African population lack economic literacy.
“For realistic growth and development, economic literacy is important to help transform what we have in the physical environment into wealth. That is why a literate population is a vehicle to wealth creation and growth,” he said in an interview.
He said wealth was a transformational power and acquisition of skills will allow for the exploitation of the physical wealth present on the continent.
Menguele said through economic literacy it was possible and easy to turn the potential into wealth for the continent.
“We have the skills and capacity to see the potential. We are surrounded with wealth. But we have a situation where our youths leave the continent because they think there is nothing to gain. It is called lack of the eye to see the potential in Africa,” he said.
Countries that are resourced with human skills transformed the wealth.
What to do
He said it was important to commodify economic literacy so that it is possible to turn the abundant physical potential into real wealth.
“If you enable the people to have skills, it will make our tasks in wealth creation a possible venture. People who have minimum skills are able to create wealth,” he said.
He said various barriers and bureaucracy have undermined progressive growth and development in Africa and wealth creation.
“The barriers make our people go the informal way. We have barriers in the administrative system where various forms are expected to be filled before one gets service.
Barriers in the banking sector in the way of bank requirements for loans. There are barriers everywhere so this makes our people revert to the informal way of production,” he said.
The Secretary General said there was a need for minimum skills to understand the essentials of living together and caring about one another.
He said financial challenges, making the AU have to rely on donations, with many member states struggling to pay membership dues, were undermining wealth creation in the region.
“This failure is perpetuating itself and this is forcing foreign countries to bail out the continent. This explains why China is building wealth in Africa instead of Africans creating their own wealth,” he said.
Local Government
He said local governments are important vehicles in wealth creation and their recognition is a milestone in realising growth and development.
“If we as the advocates of local development, we need to add value to AU. We need to change the equation. We must rely on our own assets and build from them,” he said.
The SG said some of the valuable assets include the culture of saving and thinking about tomorrow and not purely consumerism.
“From independence in Africa’s context, the culture of saving is missing. We live in consumption and less on investments. We do not have savings.
We must build assets no matter whatever situation you are going to, we have the means to live and walk upright as Africans,” he said.
On territorial wealth, he said there was a need to strengthen the capacity to transform the physical potential into wealth.
“In the emerging context, we have to acknowledge local governments as value addition in development and wealth creation. AU acknowledges local government as a leverage to development.
Having a High Council of Local Authorities embedded in AU to use the charter as its own tool to structure conversation is crucial,” he said.
He said it was important to make development all-inclusive and that Africans in the diaspora should come and invest back home.
“We have many Africans in the diaspora who are successful. Let them come back, discover and add value to the local governments and opportunities,” he said.
The SG said African countries’ relationship with colonial powers is based on extraction where countries and localities with natural resources are being deprived of the resources for hundreds of years.
“They only pay for extraction. We must work on the equation that residents enjoy the proceeds. National governments need to restructure the contracts on mining with companies and this requires human capacity, skills and economic literacy.
Lack of skills and capacity has resulted in signed contracts that have become detrimental to the communities from which the resources are being extracted,” he said.
