Akinwumi Adesina, the president of the African Development Bank, stresses the importance of easy travel within Africa
ByCiku Kimeria
Published11 hours ago
In 1960, the Ethiopian runner Abebe Bikila made history in Rome as the first athlete from sub-Saharan Africa to win an Olympic gold, even as he broke the marathon world record. All this was made more remarkable by the fact that he ran completely barefoot.
Akinwumi Adesina, the president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), recounted this story to Quartz as an analogy for his unbridled optimism in the continent’s future.
It’s easy to be skeptical about Africa’s economic promise, given all that has happened in the recent past: covid-19; the Ukraine war and its pressure on food and fuel costs; macroeconomic challenges that have led to the devaluation of several African currencies; and the disastrous effects of the climate crisis.
But Adesina, who has been dubbed, “Africa’s optimist-in-chief,” believes that, similar to Bikila, the future of Africa will defy everyone’s expectations.
“By 2050, 25% of the world’s population will be in Africa,” Adesina said in his opening address at the recent Africa Investment Forum (AIF) in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. “Africa holds 65% of the world’s uncultivated arable land and is the largest source of renewable energy in the world… The future of Africa lies in investments, not aid.”
Championed by AfDB and in partnership with several large regional and global funders, AIF, Africa’s largest investment marketplace, has mobilized over $141 billion in investment interest since its inception in 2018, with $31 billion of that from the latest edition of AIF.
Adesina outlined grand priorities for AfDB and its partners: ramping up special economic zones for agro-industrialization; redefining the future of electric vehicles, given Africa has the world’s largest cobalt deposits and sizable lithium reserves too; and unlocking investment opportunities in renewable energy.
In an interview, Adesina spoke to Quartz about a key ingredient in the future of the African economy: the mobility of people, as envisioned in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the largest free trade area in the world. The ease of movement of people across Africa is much more than a question of visa access and travel documents; it is also one of flight costs, logistics, and digitization.
Timeline
2016: AfDB publishes its inaugural edition of the Africa visa openness report, showing that it is easier for North Americans to travel in Africa than Africans.
2018: The African Union launches the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM), an initiative to open up Africa’s skies. By mid-2021, 34 countries, accounting for 75% of Africa’s passenger traffic, sign up to the SAATM, with 10 of them ready to fully implement it.
2019: The idea of a single African passport starts to gain traction, but its implementation is hindered by various factors. By mid-2021, the protocol on the free movement of persons in Africa will have been signed by 33 countries, but only ratified by four (Mali, Niger, Rwanda, and São Tomé and Príncipe), far short of the 15-country threshold needed for the protocol to become operational.
2021: Trading under AfCFTA comes into effect with the first batch of goods under the preferential agreement being shipped from Ghana to South Africa in January. By mid-2021, the agreement has been ratified by 38 countries that commit to reducing 90% of trade tariffs on goods within five years for developed countries and 10 years for less-developed.
September 2021: The Africa Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), the continent’s trade finance institution, launches a payments platform to enable instant payments in African currencies between merchants on the continent. Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, or PAPSS, is a boost to AfCFTA.
The interview below with Adesina Akinwumi has been edited for brevity and clarity.
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https://qz.com/for-africa-to-prosper-af ... 1849794529