Africa needs paradigm shift – Alhassan Andani
The Managing Director of Stanbic Bank, Mr Alhassan Andani, has said that Africa can break away from poverty and global exclusion only if the continent charts a new development paradigm anchored on a common vision and articulated by honest, transparent and courageous leaders.
“I cannot see how we can come out of poverty with such contrasting, desperate and sometimes irreconcilable viewpoints such as what pertains on the continent. We need a new leadership that will give us a collective view as a continent on critical issues, to give us a stronger united voice on the international level,” Mr Andani said at the just-ended Vodafone African Business Leaders forum.
The seasoned banker was speaking on the topic “Africa’s Leadership and Development Agenda,” at an event organised by BIA and sponsored by the telecom giant, Vodafone.
Mr Andani said that inasmuch as it was important for African governments to get their democratic governance structures and institutions right, that alone without the support of sustainable intellectual capacity, the right market size and coupled with science and technology to utilise “our tremendous natural resources we will still leave our continent impoverished.”
He said because Africa did not own any part of the production chain, much of the wealth generated on the continent from the telecommunication boom, finance, manufacturing and energy sectors were repatriated to the owners of capital abroad, so the majority of people on the continent lived below acceptable world standards of living.
“Unless we have a consistent vision driven by our leaders to pull all these factors together, we will not have the capacity to extract, commercialise and distribute the wealth equitably among our people,” he stressed.
He said Stanbic Bank, realising that about 70 per cent of Ghanaians were still engaged in agriculture, had set up agricultural delivery platforms to reach out to the rural communities, as well as small and medium scale enterprises.
Source: Daily Graphic