The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) will not succeed without sound, well-regulated financial markets, FirstRand Banking Group CEO Paul Harris said on Monday.
“The African renaissance being promoted by South African President Thabo Mbeki and other African leaders won’t happen unless the continent develops its soft infrastructure, in other words, sound, well-regulated financial markets,” Harris said.
Harris was addressing delegates from 15 African countries at the start of a three-day capital markets workshop in Johannesburg organised by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.
“Hard infrastructure such as roads, buildings and telecommunications are the easy part. Soft infrastructure is much harder to put in place. It involves the creation of a sound legal and regulatory framework free from political interference — one in which investors can have confidence and contracts can be enforced,” Harris said.
According to Harris, the development of this soft infrastructure would be underpinned by five key principles:
accountability struggles rather than power struggles,
incremental change rather than a Big Bang,
learning from our success stories in Africa rather than reinventing the wheel,
accepting that the market is a better allocator of resources than politicians,
having an action-list rather than a wish-list.
Harris conceded that plenty of good work had already been done in Africa so far, but more could be achieved through action rather than talk, facilitation rather than control, and realistic progress rather than impractical objectives.
“Our job as leaders is not to make decisions, but to facilitate good decision-making. Let’s start to exchange our success stories in Africa instead of always trying to come up with the unique solution. Think big, start small, start now,” Harris urged delegates. — I-Net Bridge