Conference on global economic crisis

The Evian Group at IMD, comprising corporate, government and opinion leaders, promotes a global market economy in a robust multilateral framework. The Group’s founding director, Jean-Pierre Lehmann, chaired the conference and observed that over the coming decades Africa will witness severe demographic pressures calling for exponential job creation.

While foreign investors and multinationals had high hopes for post-independence Africa in the 1970s, major growth took place in Southeast Asia, originally considered a basket case. The reason for Asia’s success is that it opted for pragmatism and economically realistic policies with competent technocrats, while Africa remained marred in post-independence stagnation and conflict. The notable exception is Botswana, whose GDP grew from $210 to $3,800. “The Botswana case,” stated Lehmann, “definitely proves that there is nothing in the African DNA that makes it impossible for African economies to grow at the same rate as the East Asian tigers.”

The symposium underscored the fact that Africa has the potential to better manage its vast agricultural and energy resources, but that depends on improving governance and integrating its trade practices at a regional level.

"This is an essentially Global Crisis, and we cannot devise effective strategies in any context of national isolation," remarked Franklin Cudjoe, Executive Director of IMANI, the Ghanaian thinktank.

"There comes a time when we have to ask: what is Africa‘s contribution to the thought leadership that will shape the relative post-crisis positions of the various economic regions of the globe," he added.

Source: our correspondent –  AHU