Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (PANA) – African Union Commission Chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma Tuesday decried lack of funding as the main crisis facing the implementation of Africa’s development plans.
Dlamini Zuma said Africa’s grand visions like the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the upcoming Vision 2063, have failed to make substantial headway due to the lack of local financing sources.
Speaking during a grand lecture in honour of Salim Ahmed Salim, former Secretary-General of the defunct Organisation of African Unity (OAU), now the AU, Zuma said finding a way out of the financing crisis was critical for Africa.
“We must find ways of looking after ourselves and let others help us. I believe a lot of the problems we have is to do with funding. We make plans for others to fund,” Dlamini Zuma said, referring to the failed implementation of respective plans to advance the fight against poverty in Africa.
African leaders struggled with the reorganisation of NEPAD, initially billed as the blueprint to make Africa a more prosperous continent that would attract massive foreign investments in return for a properly governed democratic continent.
The NEPAD was eventually absorbed as a programme of the AU Commission, but with less than foreseen funding required to pursue its respective programmes in agriculture, telecommunication and other infrastructure expansion dreams.
In the proposed Vision 2063, the AU is seeking to propel a new burst of industrialization by ensuring that African countries connect to each other through railways and trade more with each other.
In a speech praising Salim, who championed the maxim of African solution to African problems, Dlamini Zuma, said recent efforts to raise funds locally to fight the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, was part of the vision to make Africa self-sustaining financially.
The AU is due to launch a mobile telephone enabled campaign, StopEbola, on 7979, to raise at least US$700 million to finance long term measures against the pandemic.
Previous efforts by the AU to get approval to raise domestic funding from taxes generated from hotel guests, currency transactions and air fare taxes have failed after a series of successive Summits of the AU Assembly of Heads of State, with the last Summit in June, in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, rejecting the idea outright.
Currently, AUC budgetary controls have been shifted to the strict oversight of the Permanent Representatives Committee (PRC), made of ambassadors accredited to the AU, which is now mandated to approve budgets for the daily operations of the continental body.
The new arrangement is a result of a slowdown in the flow of funding from foreign donors who support most of the programmes.
Salim, whose inaugural lecture drew a standing ovation Tuesday, regretted the lack of progress on the issue.
The former OAU official said the task of funding the AU was an important responsibility of African leaders.
“Colonialism is over now. We continue to be free but we cannot continue to have 90% of our budgets funded from outside. We have to take the funding of the organization seriously,” Salim told journalists.
Earlier, the former OAU official, hailed for leading the continental and global assault against the apartheid regime in South Africa, said while Africa was advancing economically, the wealth was ending up in private hands.
Salim warned growth without prosperity for a majority of the African population would lead to further political turmoil, which would be a result of a more radicalised youth.
He said states must continue to ensure a fair distribution of natural and national wealth and to create a balance on the needs of the youth to avoid political chaos.
Internationally, Salim, praised for ensuring that China got a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, was solely singled out as Africa’s most charismatic servant leader.
