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African leaders urged to take full advantage of UNCTAD
Accra, April 16, Ghanadot/GNA – Mr. K. B.
Asante, a retired diplomat and renowned columnist, on
Wednesday called on African leaders to attend the
forthcoming meeting of the United Nations Commission on
Trade and Development (UNCTAD XII) in Accra with a mindset
that UNCTAD is for trade and not aid as a means for
development.
He noted that African countries had since the inception of
UNCTAD in 1964 not taken full advantage of the opportunities
it offered because they did not fully comprehend its purpose
as an institution meant to promote trade rather than aid as
a means for the development of less developed countries (LDCs).
Mr. Asante made the remark at a forum organized by IMANI, a
Ghanaian-based international trade policy think-tank, to
discuss how Africa could benefit from the forthcoming UNCTAD
XII conference slated for April 20–25, 2008 in Accra.
“UNCTAD is for trade not aid,” he said. “UNCTAD was
established to assist LDCs who could not compete effectively
on the terms of World Trade Organisation (WTO) to also
participate in world trade on more flexible terms.”
He noted that whereas UNCTAD existed to create an
opportunity such as low tariff on exports, among others, to
enable developing countries to participate effectively in
world trade, most African states subscribed to it with
expectation of receiving aid instead of participating in
trade.
“Over the years, countries like India and China, for
instance, which were rated as developing countries took
advantage of UNCTAD and inundated western markets with their
textile products, while Ghana’s Akosombo textiles for
instance went rotten,” he said.
Mr. Asante, who was President of the UNCTAD Board in
1968–69, suggested that in coming to the UNCTAD conference,
African leaders should understand that people were in trade
to make money and not as charities and therefore, “we must
come, thinking of how we can also make money by trading and
not by begging for aid”.
He observed that the talk about new partnerships as a means
of boosting Africa’s advantage in the international market
place had been overplayed, saying that, several partnerships
already existed within the continent based on various
regional and sub-regional protocols and there was therefore
no need to establish new partnerships to access UNCTAD
opportunities.
“In our confused state, we have watched foreign investors in
Africa ship their profits out and even our own local
investors invest more overseas than on the continent because
our leaders have not demonstrated a clear understanding of
what it is that we can get from UNCTAD,” he said.
Mr. Asante observed that aid had the tendency of diverting
attention of the recipient country from its own development
agenda and thereby leaving its economy at the mercy of the
donor.
He therefore urged African leaders to quickly shift their
attention from the jamboree of hosting the UNCTAD conference
and focus on the core purpose of trade during the conference
or else the continent would lose out.
Mr. Franklin Cudjoe, Executive Director of IMANI, who
moderated the forum, noted that 60 per cent of the African
productive force invested their money outside Africa because
the investment atmosphere on the continent was still not
promising.
He said at 5.6 per cent GDP growth rate, Africa fell short
of the seven per cent growth rate required to bring the
continent to a middle income level by the year 2015, adding
that, the challenge of brain drain also hampered the
development of the continent.
GNA
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