The current opportunity for Africa to benefit from the commodity boom is unlikely to be ”frittered away” like before, President Thabo Mbeki said on Monday.
Opening the Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE), Mbeki said everyone has observed the recent exciting growth trend in Africa.
”For some this may appear to be the result of the passing impact of a commodity price boom,” he said.
These people might expect African economies to slow down and run into difficulties at the end of the boom, as many did after the boom of the 1960s and early 1970s, including South Africa.
”But I am certain that those of us who have looked more closely at the development of Africa would have seen that there is evidence that the current opportunities to benefit from a commodity boom will not be frittered away as they were before, at least not by all countries,” Mbeki said.
There are many reasons why the current growth acceleration in Africa will be sustained by a number of countries, and perhaps by enough African countries to ensure that the continental momentum is maintained.
The reality is that the African continent is involved in an historical structural process focused on its sustained and progressive political, economic and social transformation, he said.
Necessarily, development economics should be an integral part of this process.
”I trust that the fact that the ABCDE conference meets in Africa for the first time will inspire all the participants to take it as their special obligation to intervene in the African development process to add impetus to our continental drive to end our condition as the wretched of the earth.
”The African, and perhaps global development challenge, is about poverty eradication, the reduction of income and other inequalities, strengthening social inclusion and political cohesion, the reduction of environmental degradation, and improving the capacity of individuals and society to take advantage of all opportunities to achieve development.
”The immediate reality is that all of us, whatever our social circumstances, know that the poor are knocking at the gate.
”If this gate does not open, because we, who have the key, are otherwise involved in the challenging effort to consider the meaning and implications of social-choice theory, among other intellectual pursuits, the masses will break down the gate.
”They will do this to challenge us to join them practically to answer the question: What should be done to give effect to the human dignity that is due to those whom the modern social order, in all countries, defines as the wretched of the earth?” he said.
It is accepted that — as can easily be demonstrated with regard to other regions in the world since the end of World War II and earlier — Africa needs the support of the developed world to achieve the ”take-off” it requires.
The question is what should be done to effect this ”development partnership”, which includes overcoming the irrational but persistent ”Afro-pessimism”.
Contemporary human society has sufficient intellectual, capital, scientific, technological, innovative and vocational skills to close the major fracture in global human society — poverty in the midst of plenty and a process of globalisation that emphasises and entrenches wealth inequalities rather than a universal progression towards the goal of a more equal and prosperous human society, Mbeki said. — Sapa