Director-General of Debt Management Office DMO, Dr Abraham Nwankwo has said that infrastructure deficit and unimplemented policies by various countries were responsible for poor industrialization in Africa. Nwankwo expressed the in Abuja at the 7th Joint Annual conference of African Union and Ministers of Economy and Finance.
The theme of the summit is “Industrialization for Inclusive and Transformative Development in Africa”.
“There are factors responsible for poor industrialization of the continent and I think that one of them is the challenge of poor infrastructure because to have effective industrialization, you have to rely mainly on the private sector,” he said
According to him, if there are no good roads, sufficient and reliable power supply, reliable rail system and other forms of infrastructure, investors will not be encouraged to put their investments in industries.
He said that industries were long-term investment outlets and that investors needed to be sure of recouping their investments before investing. Nwankwo said that government could from time to time intervene in particular industries but stressed that overall, industrialization in a country should be driven and sustained by the private sector.
“And the private sector has to invest in industries if there is enabling environment, a critical part of which is infrastructure,’’ he said.
He called for appropriate fiscal regimes that would encourage investors to pool resources in manufacturing and other sectors, which would take into account competitiveness in the global economy. Nwankwo said, “we have to take into account the cost of production and the fiscal regime in other climes.’’ He said industrialization in Africa was being hindered because the continent lacked appropriate skills.
“Much of the skills we need to really sustain industrialization are not available; much of our educational systems are weak. We are not producing the right type of skills,’’ he said.
Nwankwo said that African countries had yet to ensure that curriculum in schools were designed to meet the challenges of industrialization and called for more investment on research and development “for development in the region”. He said the summit was for various countries to share views and come up with a blueprint on how African countries would collaborate to achieve industrialization. The director-general said that collaboration would help to consolidate the positive economic growth that the region had witnessed in the last few years.
“So, when it comes to industrialization, it is appreciated that one of the ways forward is for there to be collaboration so that things that individual countries cannot do they can do together as a region. And, this will make it easier, and more importantly, there is no doubt that cooperative industrialization will mean large scale in terms of economics of finance, market and skills,’’ he stressed. He expressed the hope that African governments would show political will to adopt the blueprint of ideas that would help industrialization to thrive in the region.
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