Avoid excessive partisanship - Austin Gamey to African leaders

The Chief Executive Officer of Pulse Institute Africa, Austin Gamey, has urged African leaders to avoid partisan interests in the running of state affairs.

Such excessive partisanship, he argued, were detrimental to the citizenry.

He said African leaders must be nationalistic in order to bring everybody on board so as to build a united and a cohesive society.

Delivering a paper at the Global Well-Respected Chief Executive Officers Awards in Singapore, Mr Gamey further urged the youth and the middle class to also desist from sheepishly following parochial partisan leaders that might not be able to help them achieve their aspirations.

It was on the theme: “Promoting Global Corporate Competitiveness for Attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”

It sought to identify and publicly recognise exemplary conduct, capacities, performance and outcomes by sovereign institutions of state, multilateral institutions and their top executives with regard to political, economic, social and cultural governance globally, along with private sector enterprises and individuals that have excelled in contributing to the overall economic success.

Elected MPs

Mr Gamey, who is also a labour expert, said with the lack of planning and non-involvement of citizens in decision making through their elected Members of Parliament, “the continent clearly has been lagging behind for almost three decades and that Africa has to experience a paradigm shift”.

He said the SDGs were aimed at achieving key pillars such as building resilient infrastructure, promoting sustainable development and fostering innovation and that the intent was to eradicate poverty and thus zero hunger, good health and well-being.

The others, he said, were quality education, gender equality, access to clean water and sanitation, affordable clean energy, decent work and economic growth, industry innovation and infrastructure, reduced inequality among others.

Mr Gamey told the audience from various countries including Ghana that the SDGs were appropriate and relevant for the 21st century, but asked the question: How can the world and Africa get there?

He said maybe Singapore, Norway, Finland, Japan and few other countries may achieve these goals in the near future. 

Poor leadership

He warned that if the world continued to have poor leadership, the most advanced countries might suffer setbacks and, therefore, challenged the leadership of governments to put in place measures for balanced conversations at the UN Security Council and the General UN Assembly during their meetings to enable others to follow their examples.

Further, Mr Gamey said favourable conditions and endowment by God to a continent of minerals, forests and large bodies, due to the lack of discipline and appropriate knowledge, Africa and many other parts of the world might not be able to attain the SDGs which they themselves were part of in setting the agenda.

Mr Gamey said it appeared that mistrust and high cycles of perceptions had contributed to Africa not being able to fully operationalise the Africa Continental Free Trade Area as the European Union had been trying to do. 

Setback

“What appears to be a setback are excessive partisan considerations, conflicts, incoherent taxation systems and very poor educational systems which will not enable the world to attain the SDGs as expected,” he said.