STATEMENT OF AFRICAN UNION COMMISSION CHAIRPERSON,
DR. NKOSAZANA DLAMINI-ZUMA

TO THE

African Union Commission, UN Economic Commission for Africa ADB/RECS

“ROUNDTABLE ON FINANCING AFRICA’S TRANSFORMATION”, 19-20 July 2013, Tunis

Dr Donald Kaberuka, President of the African Development Bank Group
Dr Carlos Lopes, Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa
Executive Secretaries and Representatives of the Regional Economic Communities
AU Commissioner for Economic Affairs, HE Dr. Maruping
CEOs and Executive Directors of Regional Banks
Ladies and Gentlemen

At the retreat between the African Union Commission (AUC), the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in January this year, the three strategic partners undertook to cooperate on the development of a transformation agenda for the continent for the next fifty years. We further committed to explore all avenues for mobilizing sources of finance including tapping into Africa’s own resources and global financial opportunities.

We are confident that we have a window of opportunity to set Africa on the path towards integration, prosperity and peace. This confidence is founded on sustained economic growth of the last decade, improvements in human development indicators, steady progress in governance, and in creating peace and stability. It is reinforced by continental endowments (a youthful and growing population, the potential unleashed by women’s empowerment, urbanization) and natural resources (land, minerals, energy and marine resources), which if harnessed in the interest of Africa’s people, bodes well for the future.

We are conscious that despite progress recorded, we continue to face immense challenges: structural underdevelopment and dependency; huge backlogs in infrastructure, basic services and human resource development and the need to build people-centred, inclusive and developmental public and private cultures and institutions.

At the same time, we know that being aware of opportunities and challenges is not enough. We have continental frameworks, policies and strategies in virtually every area of importance to our development. We also do not start on a clean slate. We have fifty years of experience from which to draw lessons.

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Pan Africanism from its inception placed African self-determination, solidarity and self-reliance at the centre of the continent’s people’s struggles and efforts. It is in this context that the African Heads of State and Government in the 50th Anniversary Summit Solemn Declaration pledged to “take all necessary measures, using our rich natural and human resources, to transform Africa and make it a leading continent in… innovation and creativity.”

We know the key challenges to be tackled to speed up the economic transformation and integration of Africa, especially the full-scale implementation of infrastructure projects that will enhance agriculture, promote industrialization, job creation and trade and that will connect our peoples, economies and continent.

This Roundtable – with its focus on the ADB’s Africa 50 Fund - therefore comes at an opportune moment, because our various institutions are all seized with the question of how Africa can fund its transformation, using domestic resource mobilization as a lever and driver. These range from the ADB’s Africa 50 fund (which we will hear more of later), the study report on ‘Mobilizing Domestic Financial resources for Implementing Nepad National and Regional Programmes and Projects’ by NEPAD and the ECA, to the Report of the Panel chaired by President Obasanjo on Alternative Sources of Funding presented to the May 2013 AU Summit, as well as the various resource mobilization strategies of the RECs and regional banks.

For example, our projections are that we require 68 billion USD over the eight year period for the implementation of current PIDA priority projects – which we must admit is a minimum infrastructure programme. This represents 0.2-0.4% of the continental GDP in 2011 and 1% of combined national budgets for the same year.

And yet, according to the NEPAD and ECA study referred to above, “Africa’s resource potential is enormous and strongly confirms that the continent has the means to finance its own development”. The study presents evidence in support of this bold conclusion, by looking at various domestic financial instruments such as tax revenues, pension funds, remittances, earnings from minerals and fuels, international reserves, stock exchanges and bond markets.

The Africa 50 Fund should enable us to creatively explore some of the above instruments, with a view to raise sustainable and large scale resources to speed up the transformation of the continent.

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen

Although we are focusing today on the mobilization of resources for infrastructure development, we should not lose sight of the other driver of African development, which is investment in our human resources.

Firstly, we need artisans, entrepreneurs, project managers, town planners, financiers, civil engineers and other skills to implement and maintain our infrastructure projects. We also need them on a scale never before seen on the continent. Secondly, our infrastructure must be closely linked to our broader economic transformation programmes, including industrialization, growing a strong African private sector and enhancing innovation.
And finally, education and training is critical to our goals of creating shared prosperity, poverty eradication and equitable and inclusive growth.

We must therefore take forward our decision from the AUC/RECs retreat in April 2013 to establish a joint task team on Human resource development, in order to look at the current state of skills in Africa, and make concrete proposals on how to effect this skills revolution we need.

In conclusion, we are moving towards an intense period of consultations on Agenda 2063, so that we can be ready to present the Framework at the AU Summit in January 2014. At the same time, we must look at the implementation of our various decisions and framework with renewed energy, with a view toward building the future today.

I thank you