As I reflect on the subject of development of Africa and our plan in Africa Development Consortium to initiate development projects for Africa nation states, one thing becomes increasingly clear to me, that development of Africa will remain a burdensome task unless there is economic integration of the nation states. This raises one fundamental question: How do we begin with the economic integration?
Economic integration starts with the enabling of free movement of people and goods. When the people of one region are enabled to have easy access to other regions and to move goods and services without the bottlenecks created by tariff regimes, then economic integration has begun
How we intend to approach the economic integration of Africa question
There are enough material and human resources to initiate and sustain contiguous development projects across Africa. What we only need to do is to harness those resources. While simultaneous development projects in different nation states of Africa will be ongoing, the aspect that deals with economic integration of Africa should follow. The first shot in the economic integration program will be to implement a trans-African high speed train project
Economic integration using Africa Development Consortium model
Public Private Partnership (PPP) is Africa Development Consortium preferred model for socio-economic development of Africa and this model will be employed in the trans-Africa high speed train project. Africa development Consortium will partner the governments of various African countries to build the track. Then private investors will put the rolling stock in place. The Trans-Africa high speed train project is my early dream for economic integration and development of Africa. We are going to initiate discussion on this project in our first meeting with African Heads of State when the delegation of Africa Development Consortium will attend AU meeting in Addis Ababa.
If you are a Railway expert and a member of Africa Development Consortium, start warming up, there is a lot to do
Leave a Reply