South African President Thabo Mbeki has underscored the World Economic Forum on Africa’s focus on developing agriculture to absorb unemployment and fight poverty on the continent.
Speaking in a plenary session on Friday — at the Cape Town convention centre — he said the central issue confronting Africa was job creation.
“In that context we have discussed the issue of the role of agriculture. There is a formal resolution of the African Union summit, which says that all of us most devote 10% of our budget to agricultural development to address challenges of poverty.”
Noting that the challenges of poverty and job creation confronted most African states, he noted that the “overwhelming majority of populations” of African states were in the rural — agricultural — areas.
Asked if he recognised that growth was not necessarily satisfying the vast numbers of unemployed, Mbeki said, “Sure, certainly the challenge of the reduction and elimination of unemployment is not one that you can deal with overnight.”
Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete said that his government was focusing on the modernisation of the Tanzanian agricultural economy through the combination of government investment and “the active participation of the private sector”. — I-Net Bridge