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The Director General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has asked African leaders to look inward for funding opportunities for the continent.
“Access to aid, I think we can begin to think of it as a thing of the past,” the former Nigerian finance minister said at the headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
According to the ex-World Bank developmental economist, Africa really needs to change its mindset and see opportunities with the seeming challenge and effect of the pause of billions of dollars in global funding for United States’ health and education projects in countries of the world.
Okonjo-Iweala said African leaders must attract investment and mobilise resources to survive contemporary social and economic realities that come with the policies of the Donald Trump presidency.
She said: “But we can also see it as opportunity. We had a a meeting with Development Bank Associational itself with President along with President Mahama. One of the things we talked about was that how do we better mobilise resources within our continent to invest in ourselves and I pointed out that we have about $250Billion of pension funds resources which we need to find a way to tap.
“First the pension funds need to look at their regulations to see how they can change so that we can invest more on the continent rather than investing more outside.
“Pension funds from South Africa is the biggest, but we have South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco, Botswana, Namibia and so on, when you start totalling the resources, it’s huge, hugely significant, $250billion is the estimate.
“We have these African Development Banks like African Finance Corporation, Afrexim Bank, is chairing the association of African multilateral institutions. We need to capitalize them better instead of looking outside to say what can we get.
“We have our own institutions. The shareholders are the African Governments. capitalize them properly so that their balance sheets can expand. They have a combined balance sheet now of about $70billion, but if you look at the needs, we have for infrastructure alone, up to more than $200billion a year. You can see that we have to expand the balance sheet of these organisations.
“We have more than 84 national development banks and financial institutions, apart from multilateral, how do we mobilise them and capitalize them better so they can help us finance.
“In Nigeria during the time I was finance minister, we raised a diaspora bond of $300million that was quite successful. That is another type of instrument you can tap, tapping resources of people outside, not only just inside.
“So, there is so many creative and innovative ways we can create resources.”
Okonjo-Iweala also noted that Africa needs to add value and monetize mineral resources on the continent.
She said the minerals need to to be processed on the continent and not just to be taken out.
She stressed the need of increase trade and lowering trade barriers, while ensuring that there is an increase in intra-Africa trade.