OWN CORRESPONDENT, Kuala Lumpur | Tuesday 12.20pm.
JAPAN has announced plans to send Asian experts to Africa to upgrade skills and help lift it out of poverty.
Amongst the plans is a major IT skills injection into the continent.
Yasuaki Nogawa, deputy director general of Japan’s Middle East and Africa bureau, said the country will help the UN Development Program implement the $1,5-million project this year to promote information and communication technologies.
“The project may be named e-Africa,” he said. “The key factors… will be human resource development, technology transfer, infrastructure, policy advice and coordination with the private sector.”
Nogawa said on Tuesday the world body is already sending people to Africa on training missions, for this and other development projects.
“We have decided to assist the UN to form a program to send Asian experts to Africa,” he told an Asia-Africa forum. [Besides the IT programme] This program will be in a range of $1,2-million for the first year.”
Nogawa said the vast majority of Africans still live in poverty amid daunting problems such as foreign debt, disease, political instability and war.
“Against the backdrop of such situation… Asia-Africa cooperation has a significant meaning,” he said. “Both regions have to join forces ever more and face squarely the challenges of our times.”
Demba Ba, who heads the World Bank’s private sector development for Africa, said the continent must speed up its private sector-led growth and build a “backbone of physical infrastructure and human capital.”
“Africa needs help from Asian tigers in order to rear many elephants and lions for it to compete in the jungle of global markets,” he said. — AFP