African Leaders Urged To Lay Strong Base For A Union Govt


HARARE, May 25 (Bernama) -- African leaders have been urged to lay a strong political foundation that will encourage economic integration and unity in order to move Africa towards a continental government.

Speaking at an Africa Day symposium to discuss the establishment of a Union government for Africa on Thursday, African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) executive director, Soumano Sako, was quoted by Zimbabwe News Agency (New Ziana) as saying that an African Union government would rapidly facilitate the economic integration of the continent, speed up investment in various sectors of the economy and promote growth and macroeconomic stability in Africa.

He said there was a growing recognition of the economic and political advantage of having a united Africa, but expressed doubt whether African states would be willing to surrender their sovereignty to a supra-national institution serving as a Union government.

He said while there had been a boom in Africa's trade in recent years, buoyed by high commodity prices, the continent needed to diversify revenue sources to power its economic growth.

"Africa must capitalise on the boom by pursuing polices which promote the non-resource sectors of the economy, encourage more diversification of Foreign Direct Investment inflows, and promoting intra Africa trade," he said.

The ACBF boss further noted that China's demand for raw materials had played a major role in driving up commodity prices and that country's need for commodities had greatly boosted commodity prices in Africa.

Trade between China and Africa rose to US$55 billion last year from US$40 billion during 2005 and US$10 billion during 2000.

China has also increased its African investment to $6.7 million from only a few hundred million dollars three years ago.

The International Monetary Fund is also projecting African exports to rise by $69.5 billion to US$396 billion this year while imports will be $287.4 billion.

The trade surplus of US$108.6 billion, coupled with capital inflows of US$55 billion during recent years, could cause foreign exchange reserves to expand by 32 percent to US$306 billion, he said.

Speaking at the same meeting which was attended by a number of local scholars, African ambassadors and students, University of Zimbabwe lecturer, Joseph Cerebra, said a Union government would reduce the scope of conflicts in the continent.

"With greater integration the scope of conflict will be limited although this does not eliminate conflict altogether," he said.

He said in coming up with a continental government, issues such as state sovereignty, national interest, the impact of AU policies on the politics of member states, economic harmonisation and the values and cultural identity of the of AU, needed to be looked into.

"Whether the AU will evolve into a single country or a club of individual countries will also impact significantly on state sovereignty," he said.

Professor Rudo Gaidzanwa, also a UZ lecturer, said the union government for Africa should be people-centred.

"There is need to have a Union for people rather than a Union for governments," she said.

She said there was also a need to promote free movement of people, linguistic integration and facilitate intra trade among Africa states as a prerequisite to the success of the continental government.

"The Union must be good in terms of content and quality. We should avoid the risk of having a Union without development," she said.

Zimbabwe joins the rest of Africa in celebrating 44 years of the founding of the Organisation of African Unity, now the AU, on May 25.

-- BERNAMA



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