Showing posts with label Liberia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Liberia. Show all posts

Friday, January 22, 2010

"A Prosperous and Exciting Africa in Our Lifetime" Tony Blair talks to African Investor magazine

Former UK prime minister Tony Blair has the utmost faith that Africa will succeed, something the continent needs from investors and advisors. His ultimate vision for Africa is to see the continent achieve its own goals. "It's up to Africa and its leaders. I believe that we will see a prosperous and exciting Africa in our lifetime and we are approaching a point where the business community is waking up to the opportunities of Africa at a time when Africa has this new generation of leaders."

Source: "A Prosperous and Exciting Africa in Our Lifetime" Tony Blair talks to African Investor magazine
The Office of Tony Blair, Wednesday, Jan 20, 2010:
The following interview appeared in the January-February 2010 edition of African Investor magazine

"Africa has been at the top of my foreign policy for the last ten years," says Tony Blair, former UK prime minister. "From the very beginning I wanted to forge a new partnership with African leaders and countries. I really believe that Africa is the next big opportunity for investors, it would not only be good for business but could transform the lives of Africans."

Blair is now involved in supporting the continent through The Office of Tony Blair. He has established several other foundations, including The Africa Governance Initiative, to encourage governments across the continent to develop strong regulation to encourage investment in a clutch of African countries - Sierra Leone, Rwanda and now Liberia - and drive development.

"I firmly believe that, in the long-term, good governance and sustained economic growth are the key to poverty eradication. This is the basis of the African Governance Initiative that I set up 18 months ago," says Blair.

"We work with African countries who are serious about standing on their own two feet by growing their private sector and making government work more effectively," says Blair, with the aim of motivating African governments to be independent thinkers.

Blair has been developing his interest in Africa for a long time. He drew criticism for his emotive turn of phrase in calling Africa "a scar on the conscience of the world", accused of shoring up a negative image that Africa was unable to act for itself. At the time of the Commission for Africa, an organisation established to bring to light the core issues affecting the continent, Blair said: "I fear my own conscience on Africa. I fear the judgement of future generations, where history properly calculates the gravity of the suffering. I fear them asking: but how could wealthy people, so aware of such suffering, so capable of acting, simply turn away to busy themselves with other things?"

Now he supports countries he believes are getting on and up for themselves.

Ernest Bai Koroma, President of Sierra Leone, says his government has taken great steps towards driving economic growth in the country. "The IMF has predicted that we will grow at twice the African average by the end of this year (2009)," he said. "But this is only the beginning; our country has a wealth of untapped potential. We are building a legislative framework that provides the right incentives for investors while ensuring that all feel the benefits of economic growth," says Koroma.

The Sierra Leone Trade and Investment Forum held in late November 2009 was attended by Blair and roused great enthusiasm for investing in the country.

"Sierra Leone has significant, unrealised potential and is open for business and investment," said George Soros, international business mogul, in a televised address. "If you look carefully at the real Sierra Leone, it is clear that the country has the genuine potential to become a leading African economy."

Although Blair gives money freely, he says "all African countries should aim to be in a place where they do not need development assistance.

"President Kagame of Rwanda and President Koroma in Sierra Leone, who I work closely with, are just two examples of a new generation of pro-business, pro-reform leaders from Africa who are serious about rooting out corruption, providing protection for investors and leading more stable, better-governed countries," he says.

"I have been through similar challenges to the presidents I work with, albeit in a very different national and regional context. You sometimes need the experience of someone who has sat on ‘the other side of the desk'."

Blair has the utmost faith that Africa will succeed, something the continent needs from investors and advisors. His ultimate vision for Africa is to see the continent achieve its own goals. "It's up to Africa and its leaders. I believe that we will see a prosperous and exciting Africa in our lifetime and we are approaching a point where the business community is waking up to the opportunities of Africa at a time when Africa has this new generation of leaders."

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Africa is focused on prosperity, says Kagame

On September 21, the president of Rwanda Paul Kagame gave a speech at the International Peace Institute in New York in which he said Africa’s own private sector has been gaining strength in the mobile telecommunications that are changing the lives of millions of Africans by increasing access to information, facilitating education, health and trade, reaching into even the remotest villages.

The latest World Bank Group’s “Doing Business” Report shows that Sub-Saharan Africa is reforming at a fast pace, he said noting that Liberia, a recent graduate from conflict, has become the second most active reformer in Sub-Saharan Africa and Sierra Leone.

“On the political and diplomatic front, we have now exchanged ambassadors with the DRC – paving the way for further efforts in the more important realms of economic growth and development – including joint projects in energy, environment, trade and investment,” he said.

Source:   The Independent, Uganda, Tuesday, 6 October 2009 -
Africa is focused on prosperity, says Kagame
On September 21, the president of Rwanda Paul Kagame gave a speech at the International Peace Institute in New York in which he outlined how Africa is “pushing the boundaries of peace, reconciliation and development”.

He said stability, peace, and development make today’s Africa unrecognisable from that of yesteryear.

“Present day preoccupation in Africa revolves around creating prosperity, especially strategies to mitigate the ongoing global economic crisis – including strengthening markets, regional integration, productivity, competitiveness, science, technology and innovation,” he said.

He said this has enabled most African countries to sustain economic growth rates of above 5% before the current global economic crisis, attract bigger volumes of venture and equity capital, a larger share of foreign direct investment, and broaden its sources of trade and investment beyond traditional partners of North America and Western Europe to Asian countries, especially China and India.

The president said more importantly, Africa’s own private sector has been gaining strength in the mobile telecommunications that are changing the lives of millions of Africans by increasing access to information, facilitating education, health and trade, reaching into even the remotest villages.

The latest World Bank Group’s “Doing Business” Report shows that Sub-Saharan Africa is reforming at a fast pace, he said noting that Liberia, a recent graduate from conflict, has become the second most active reformer in Sub-Saharan Africa and Sierra Leone.

“Our country, Rwanda, is identified as the top reformer worldwide, moving from one hundred and forty third position to sixty seventh out of one hundred and eighty three countries,” he said. “With the exception of a few conflict hotspots, Africa is a different place today.”

He said the establishment of the African Union (AU), with a fundamentally different vision and mindset from its predecessor, the Organization of the African Unity (OAU), is indicative of this significant shift.

He described how the AU supports peace operations in Burundi in 2003, in Darfur Sudan in 2004.

Rwanda has participated in African and UN led peace missions in Darfur, where it remains the largest contributor.

Commenting on Rwanda’s neighborhood, President Kagame said together with the Democratic Republic of Congo, “a major breakthrough towards extending the boundaries of peace” has been achieved in a conflict that has roots in colonial and post-colonial history, whose current manifestation arose in mid-1994 when the government that committed genocide in Rwanda fled – with all its institutions and a hostage population of three million – into what was then Zaire.

“Regrettably, the “definition” of this problem kept changing in the minds of the international community – resulting in delaying the closure of this chapter of misery and havoc,” he said.

Initially, he said, the issue was about caring for the millions of refugees in camps in Eastern Zaire without a willingness to separate genuine refugees from the genocidal forces.

He said Rwanda’s intervention brought about another distorted definition of the problem – Rwanda was now accused of exploiting DRC’s natural resources employing the pretext of hunting genocide perpetrators.

“Numerous reports on this subject were written by the `experts’ – all of them were false and were not worthy of the resources and time spent on them,” he said.

“The question I always ask is this: if in real fact Rwanda does not have the technical capacity to exploit our own mineral resources, how can we take advantage of those in DRC – a country like many others in Africa that have not fully utilized these resources for decades for their own advancement?” he said.

He said Rwanda’s developmental achievements since 1994 are not based on illegal exploitation of the resources of another country.

“We are steadily improving the lives of our people because Rwanda is making all the effort to build a nation of laws, and institutions that promote security, peace, reconciliation and development,” he said, “We are painstakingly building the confidence of domestic and foreign investors to put their money into our hotels, energy projects, agriculture, construction industry, and ICT, on the basis of transparent governance and predictability.”

The president said a stable, peaceful and more integrated sub-region enhances these objectives.

He described how, in 2002, the United Nations asked Rwanda to withdraw from the DRC and set up MONUC, a peace keeping mission of 17,000 “at a very high price without corresponding results”.

“The genocidal forces continued to operate, destabilizing both the host country and Rwanda,” he said.

He said the situation only changed fundamentally when Rwanda and the DRC undertook a joint military operation that weakened the command and control structure of these forces, repatriated nearly 1,000 combatants and over 5,000 civilians to Rwanda, thus raising confidence at leadership and citizen levels for further collaboration.

“On the political and diplomatic front, we have now exchanged ambassadors with the DRC – paving the way for further efforts in the more important realms of economic growth and development – including joint projects in energy, environment, trade and investment,” he said.

He thanked many global leaders, including the United Nations secretary general, for their support but restated that “today’s Africa is increasingly one that seeks its own solutions as well as a different relationship with the international community – one based on mutual respect, trust, and a collaborative outlook.”