As African nations strive to
achieve closer integration in trade in response to the global economic crisis,
ITC Executive Director Patricia R. Francis has warned that the voice of the
private sector in Africa is not being heard sufficiently.
Ms Francis said that, with only five years to go to meet the Millennium
Development Goal targets, ‘It will take coordinated multilateral action to
address the triple bottom line of people, planet and prosperity if we are to
achieve these goals, and the private sector is a partner in this drive.’
Ms Francis was speaking after
addressing a two-day African Private Sector Forum in Kampala, Uganda,
last week, held on the eve of the African Union (AU) summit in the Ugandan
capital. The forum demonstrated the growing partnership between the AU and ITC
in taking leadership to engage with the private sector on issues of importance
to the African continent. The forum was devoted to the theme ‘Creating new
business opportunities in the aftermath of the global economic and financial
crisis’.
ITC, through the Aid for Trade
initiative of the World Trade Organization (WTO), is at the forefront of
efforts to create an environment that supports small and medium-sized
enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries to become more competitive. It also
works to help national finance institutions address the question of access to
finance for SMEs, and in particular women-owned enterprises, which badly need
better structured financial support for every stage of supply chain activities.
According to Ms Francis, the
private sector has three roles in Aid for Trade: as beneficiaries; as
advocates; and as partners for trade development. ‘At the end of the day, it is
the private sector that trades,’ said Ms Francis, ‘but there is a large deficit
in the private sector voice in advocacy for business partnership within and
outside Africa.’
Forum
participants observed that SMEs were becoming key drivers of economic growth
and that there was a need for new ways of providing trade finance support
mechanisms for the sector as well as value and supply chains connecting Africa
to global markets. The forum agreed efforts were needed to:
Mobilize resources from the African Development
Bank and other regional development banks to facilitate the access of SMEs to
long-term credit, and guarantee credit lines from local commercial banks
Provide business development services to exporting
SMEs so as to enhance their capacities to develop bankable agribusiness
projects.
ITC’s Executive Director told the
meeting that Africa should be looking for investments that added greater value
to their products even as commodities.
‘The big issue is about getting
the private sector in Africa up to a level
where it can compete globally,’ Ms Francis said. ‘The private sector has the
energy and imagination to take on the international marketplace, but it needs
support from governments and international agencies through programmes such as
Aid for Trade.’
She also urged the establishment
of a mechanism to facilitate a sustainable dialogue between the public and
private sectors in regional institutions to ensure that the voice of the
private sector is heard as the continent tries to improve trading arrangements.
The Kampala meeting, attended by
business leaders from across the continent, concluded with adoption
of an ‘African Private Sector Forum Declaration’ outlining priority actions for
implementation by the private sector, governments, regional economic communities
and the AU, with the objective of enhancing the competitiveness of African
industries and improving the continent’s share of global trade and investment
flows
In Kampala, Ms Francis led a
delegation of private sector leaders to the Africa Summit Roundtable, at which
she presented key messages from the forum to heads of states and government
leaders. Her main message was that they needed to reinforce the
centrality of the trade agenda to Africa’s development, including Aid for Trade.
She stressed that ITC’s mandate was to engage with the private sector in order
to support that agenda. This required forgingmeaningful partnerships at national,
regional and continental levels to take advantage of market opportunities,
including:
- Engaging in public–private dialogue in a
forward-looking spirit as governments and the business community work to
improve their competitiveness in a rapidly changing global environment
- Setting the agenda on the importance of
establishing an institutionalized mechanism for dialogue and joint action
at national, regional and continental levels in order to be credible
business partners in global markets.
The
above was a joint initiative of the African Union, the Investment Agency of
Uganda, the Ugandan Chamber of Commerce and the Global Compact.
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