Africa needs fair trade, not aids - Prof Li Anshan
The Director of the Centre of African Studies at the Peking University in Beijing-China, Professor Li Anshan has observed that African countries have the capacity to plan and pursue their own development agenda.
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He said what the international community should rather do was to join African countries to implement their own development agenda instead of imposing on them a straight jacket development agenda.
"African development is not in a vacuum. We should join them and provide assistance toward the achievement of their development agenda", he stated.
Professor Li was contributing to discussions at a two-day international workshop to explore how China and the Netherlands can build synergies in capacity building, peacekeeping and economic development in Africa.
Attended by academia from the two countries, non-governmental organisations and some media personnel from Africa, the workshop enabled the participants to share the Netherlands and Chinese experience in international development.
Professor Li said poverty reduction strategies should be modeled by African countries themselves to suit their local situations, adding that foreign aids "cannot replace the development agenda of Africans".
He stated that foreign aid, investment and trade should not be separated from the quest of the international community to assist in the development of African countries.
"What Africa needs is fair trade and investment and not aids", he said, adding that " the way forward is to connect investments with technical assistance".
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Professor Li said Africa donor partners should tie aid with development and called on China and Netherlands to combine their efforts to assist in the development of Africa.
"We should identify the advantages that we all have in our cooperation with Africa. We have a lot to do in our international cooperation with Africa", he said.
He explained that China does not use the term "donor" to describe its relationship with Africa since that connoted inequality in the relationship between the two sides.
Professor Li observed that African initiatives were important since Africans themselves had to be the major players in the development of the continent.
"We cannot set up a plan for Africa. We can rather join them in their efforts and not impose a plan for them", he said.
Some of the participants called for the involvement of African elite in businesses, agriculture and industrialisation in order to use their experience to increase production and generate wealth.
They observed that the current trend whereby most African elite preferred to go into politics to the detriment of the other sectors would not augur well for rapid socio-economic development of Africa.
The participants called for measures to enhance culture exchange programmes among Africans and their Chinese counterparts to enable people from the two two countries to understand the steel to deepen the bond of relationship.
Writer's Email: nanadu63@gmail.com / emmanuel.gyamerah@graphic.com.gh