Vice President of Ghana Mahamudu Bawumia of Ghana welcomes President Kagame to Accra, where he will be attending the African Transformation Forum
President Paul Kagame has said that for Africa to reach the desired transformation, it has to invest in its people.
While speaking at the African Transformation Forum (#ATF2018) in Accra, Ghana on Thursday, Kagame defined genuine transformation as a concept that is citizen centred.
“To talk about transformation is to talk about our people and resources that need to be put to good use,” he said.
“We are talking about the management of this resource and the political will and process that must accompany all these actions for us to be where we want to be.”
The President said that there is no more excuse for Africa to not speed up and reach desired transformation while it has all it takes.
“It is evident that Africa has all kinds of resources for us to move fast if we want to and there is no excuse, we haven’t found any justification that says Africa has an abundance of natural resources and yet continues to be poor decade after decade.”
For President Kagame, the forum should be an opportunity to identify the missing link, that makes Africa fail to move faster and suggest ways how they can adjust and move forward.
Kagame empahasised that there are some principles to keep in mind while thinking about transformation that is effective.
“As I mentioned, key components to transformation lie primarily in investing in our people, in partnerships between the private and public sector and the policies we put in place to help us achieve this, as a continent,” Kagame said.
The real approach to achieve this transformation goes beyond understanding the problem. According to the President, it also includes an approach on how to take action.
Meanwhile, the president finds no problem with the rest of the world saying that Africans need to change the way they do business.
“If the rest of the world is shunning Africa and say they want to be more inward looking it is a reminder to us that the closer we come together and the more intra Africa trade we engage in, the better off we are and the failure to do so bears consequences,” he said.
The second African Transformation Forum (ATF2018) is hosted by the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET) in collaboration with the Government of Ghana.
