Emmanuel Nnadozie, executive secretary, African Capacity Building Foundation, ACBF, in an interview with journalists on the margins of the 27^th annual meeting of the board of governors of the foundation in Yaounde, Cameroon, last week, speaks on how African governments are responding to the message of youth empowerment and developing the critical skills needed develope and industrialise the continent. He also talked about ACBF’s involvement in public health and why tobacco companies are targeting Youths in Nigeria and DR Congo among other things. Maureen Chigbo, editor, covered the two-day meeting which ended July 20, for Realnews. Excerpts

What has been the impact of your message of the youth unemployment being a bomb ready to explode on African governments? Are they listening to you? Are they implementing anything from what you’ve been saying? Are you happy with the responses that you’ve got from African governments so far?

I would say that some of them are moving in the right direction but some countries are being a bit slow in addressing this problem that requires strong and urgent action before it worsens.  So there are some hopeful signs. Progress is being made in many countries but at the same time, I think, given the nature of the problem there will be need for intensification of the action being taken by African countries.

Youth unemployment has been discussed in many forums. What makes it special now?

Something has happened. African countries have put in place employment and youth empowerment policies. Youth unemployment is an empowerment issue more than it is an employment issue. And one sees that the Declaration of the Decade of the Youth is something that has put this agenda in the forefront. But this Decade of the Youth is ending this year. Now this makes us to ask the question as to how far have we come. And this is part of what this meeting is trying to focus attention on. Have we really and significantly faced this challenge or not? Do we have to declare another decade of the youth to be able to face it? From my own viewpoint, I can say there are some places where positives are being made and others where things are not quite as accelerated as we would want to see.

This meeting is also talking about critical skills –  not just the generality of the  problem, but paying attention to the kind of critical skills that are necessary  to empower the youth. So we hope that looking at the continental and regional dimension here in Central Africa, and then looking at moving forward, what we are learning, what works and what doesn’t work, who has some success stories and who does not, and what are the concrete actions that can be taken right after this meeting to be able to really put in place some actionable points that will address the problem.

In your view, what are these critical skills needed?

ACBF has done a good job – the two major ones being the international development agenda, and the continental development agenda, namely the SDGs (Sustainable development goals) and Agenda 2063. We have systematically really looked at the readiness of African countries to be able to achieve the SDGs or implement the flagship projects of Agenda 2063, in particular the First 10-year programme, and we have identified areas where, for example, we did this analysis flagship project by flagship project. If you say you want to achieve an African Continental Free Trade Area by a certain amount of time, what do you need to be able to do that. Do you have the skills? If you don’t have it, what can you do to achieve it? If we are looking at the soft skills or soft capacities; we are also looking at the critical technical skills. We are also looking at institutional capacities to be able to achieve this, and we have analysed it. For example, if you are talking about the third and fourth industrial revolution, you need data expansion programmers, you need people who are extremely literate and experts in technology, and you need them all over. If you want to bring about transformation and industrialisation, when we did the assessment of what we have and what we produce yearly compared to what we needed, there is this very alarming gap. We have seen that if we need engineers, for example, only about 200,000 engineers should be produced every year but the need is for 4.3 million engineers. If you want to really look at all those specific projects that you want to do in the next 10 years. It is no more 10 years, two years have gone, and so this requires some specific action.

Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM), there is no question that this is where the emphasis has to be. We are also saying that don’t do them in abstract terms because if you invest in the same way as we have been investing in education in Africa, you are investing in unemployment. I have said that many, many times. If you don’t have this multi-stakeholder  – a tripartite education dialogue among the institutions that provide education, the government that funds most of the education and the policies, and the private sector that creates the greatest of jobs. The three have to have a dialogue and ask private sector what skills do you need. How can universities adjust their curriculum to fit these needs? We’ve been working with the Afreximbank. Africa has been talking about trade. How come there is no university on the continent that offers a course in trade finance. And that is shocking. If you look at petroleum engineering, a country like Nigeria which has been producing petroleum since 1958 has only recently started training petroleum engineers in the country. And we have had universities since before 1960 when Ibadan was there, so you keep training people in things that you don’t need. So these are the critical technical skills that we need for the continent.

You talk about some countries that have made progress and others going slow. What can the Foundation do push up the slow-movers to hurry up a bit, time is running out for us?

We can do a number of things. Some of them is what we are doing here –  continuing to shine the light on the issue. As a development expert, my philosophy is not what is new, if you keep talking about what is new then you are missing the point and you will be following what we call something that is fashionable rather than something that is fundamental. Development is about doing fundamental things, not necessarily what is new. Meanwhile, if you don’t have infrastructure, you can talk about gender, climate change. You can talk about anything you like, you cannot industrialise. If you do not industrialise, you cannot have an economic that creates jobs and the things that can help people to have higher incomes. You will just be exporting your jobs. If you do not pay attention to the human capital that you have, and train them properly and train them in the right areas, you can talk about anything that you like, digital age or computerise this and that, you will not be able to do that.

So for us it is very, very important to pay attention to the fundamental things, and to be able to move forward. This is really why I have been pushing that countries need to understand that there are three or four key things that are necessary. One is the human capital. And when I say human capital, I didn’t simply just say an educated population. I am saying people who are well educated but who are healthy and who have the right mindset because capital in its sense is not just simply going to school but having an education that makes sure that you have knowledge.  It is not what we are having today where there is too much education but too little learning – you know people are focussing on certificates. They move around with certificates without knowing how to do anything. I encounter young people who say I need a job. So I ask them a simple question: What can you do for me. Then they look at me and say when I come, you tell me what I need to do and I promise you I will do it and show that I am a quick learner. So you see, they don’t understand the fundmental issue. Even the educational system has not prepared them to know how to sell themselves because it is a demand and supply issue. The real issue is that they will have some certificate but have no skills. So, human capital is important.

Number 2,  is physical capital, which is infrastructure or capital investment, however you want to call it – energy, transport, water systems, and information infrastructure; having investments in that, including railroads because industrialisation and transportation are key, you cannot do it by having roads and airports alone. Railroads are critical for industrialisation because that is where you can move things from a place to another in massive numbers at a cheaper rate. But the manufacturers of automobiles are making sure that Africans continue to neglect their railways system, which is flourishing everywhere else. Thankfully, countries like Kenya and those in East Africa are now getting serious and getting the Chinese to come and develop that. So infrastructure is two, and especially energy infrastructure because we are still very, very poor in that area, given the renewable resources and the variety of sources.

The third one is the institutions that are necessary. And these are the institutions globally speaking, starting with the constitutions of the countries. I have often said we need to do an assessment of each country’s constitution and see how development-friendly it is because if your constitution does not even enshrine things that will make you become developed, you are not going to move right. Basically, you have tied your hands and keep trying to develop. Because you may have created the structure and systems that you have, but it will prevent you from getting yourself and your things right, especially in terms of who plays what role in the economy. I did an examination of the Nigerian constitution once and two things came out. Number one, this was a purely legal document that an average person cannot understand. If you compare that with the constitution of the United States which is just small, the Nigerian constitution is about five times the size of the US constitution. But the constitution of the United States, anybody who can read will understand what is said in there. The same thing is that of South Africa.

Number two is everywhere you read, it says the government will do this, the government will do that. So this is a socialist economy where the government will do that? So, even that institution itself is a problem to start with. The other ones are the governmental institutions whether they are parliament, or it is the executive or the economic institutions (the central banks or ministries and so on and so forth) and other social institutions, how strong and how good are they to provide good governance, to provide accountability, to ensure that policies are implemented. And institutional weakness is the number one thing preventing policies from being implemented in addition to human capacity.

Of course, the third one and probably the most important one is leadership, which if you look at the countries that are moving forward in Africa, you can identify a leader whether he is a democrat or not that’s not the issue, the point is that somebody who is visionary and who can hold people accountable and make sure that things happen.

So for me, there are too many things we have to put in place but these are fundamental in any society for things to move forward, whether it is youth unemployment, youth empowerment, or economic transformation.

You’ve been preaching this message consistently, are there any takers? Are there any African leaders, governments, institutions that are saying let’s listen to what the professor has been saying and implement what he has been saying? Or are you just preaching in the dark and nobody hearing you?

There has been interaction. The first person that I encountered, the first leader with whom I had a very long debate and eventually started respecting my views was the late prime minister of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi. Many people do not know how hard-working that man was and how visionary he was as a leader, so if they see Ethiopia moving forward, he really laid the groundwork for that. He had three things that were extremely important. One was he was a visionary. Two was he was an intellectual. Three, he was an astute politician. These three things are rarely seen in an individual because they are either visionary, and that is the end of the story. They have good a vision but that goes nowhere. An intellectual, we call it an intellectual implementer, because he did not stop at vision, he always made sure his vision goes to implementation. And he read everything. He will engage you and discuss with you and debate with you. So whenever I did my macro-economic report on Africa, he would have a discussion with me. And he kept praising the work. He told me he had read everything, especially the one we did in 2011, about making the most of primary commodities in Africa. The argument was simple, don’t listen to anybody who says Africa cannot industrialise based on its own primary commodities. We demonstrated that, that is absolutely not true. If you have oil, you have cocoa, you have coffee, you can industrialise based on them, instead of exporting them as raw material. We showed how exactly we can do it.

So I believe a lot of people bought into that, including him. Rwanda is also following in the same pattern as well.

But I think it requires more than me to be able to convince people. There are like-minded people who are preaching the same message with whom we agree, and we have to continue to do so because, understand that societies don’t move at the same pace, that’s one. And number two, if you look at the history of economic development you would see that people die before their ideas even become fashionable and become important. I will give you an example, there are many of them; let me look at those who are pioneers of economics: Alfred Marshall, Adam Smith or John Meynes Kaynes, a lot of them, their ideas became important after they were no longer there. But their people continued to put those ideas into practice. So we will continue to push and hopefully people will listen. What I am saying is not novel or would you say there is some revolutionary thinking in it. No it is based on knowledge of development but also on my own observation of what had made countries to move forward and what has not.

How has ACBF been able to make all the achievements you talked about in the morning when there have been delays in redeeming pledges made by African countries?

You know ACBF is not relying on the contributions of African countries to be able to build capacity on the continent. It relies on the contributions of African governments for them to demonstrate their belief in the Foundation and political support, the ownership, and their financial support. So to that extent their contributions help us. We leverage their contributions to be able to get more resources from other partners. So really that is why we are still able to deliver for Africa. And ACBF is not an organisation that operates in a quid pro quo arrangements. In other words, the 45 African countries in which we have really invested heavily, we have spent over $20million in Cameroon, it is not because they have paid their pledges or not, it is just because we are able to look at their needs and address them. For example, we have prioritised countries that are affected by conflicts or crisis, and many of them are not able to redeem their pledges. I remember after the Ebola crisis, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, there was talk about their pledges. So I told the ministers that there was no need to talk about pledges because these countries had suffered serious crisis. What we should be talking about is how we can support them, not how to redeem their pledges. And you can even see their own willingness to redeem their pledges. But I see your point. We are not happy with certain countries that are in a position to redeem their pledges but are not doing so. It is difficult for me to name them but let me express my gratitude to countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Zimbabwe by the way that have always pledged sizable amounts and redeemed their pledges because as I explained to them this does help the Foundation to be able to do its work. I have just been informed that Cameroon has fulfilled its pledge and Malawi wants to do that as well. So I will encourage African countries to demonstrate their belief and ownership of ACBF as shareholders by doing this because what we get there is not really what we use to operate.

How would you describe the performance of ACBF in 2017?

Excellent. The word I would use there is excellent. Number one is if you look at the number of projects we were able to deliver and, as I mentioned before, we have about three different ways of measuring our performance. Number one is what we call the Programme Development Objectives, and in this, we work together with the World Bank and AfDB (African Development Bank) to develop. So we have itemised objectives and indicators of the objectives. Some of them are issues related to how valuable the customer sees our support. Some of them are the impact made, some of them require the volume of investments we have made, some of them require efficiency in terms of the money we have put in the project and the one we used to service the project. So, for example, there is something called the staff cost ratio, the target that we had was 17 percent.  That is our staff cost in delivering our projects must not be above 17 percent. We did 14 percent which is a remarkable achievement. Go and ask any other organisation if they can do something like that, which means we are putting more money in projects and programmes than we are using ourselves. When I came to ACBF it was 25 percent. So that is a major achievement. Number two is we were supposed to put at least 80 percent of our money into projects, we did 81 percent in 2017. We almost exceed our targets to the satisfaction of everyone.

Now let me go to the impact of some of our projects, how they did on the ground, how they helped policy, how we helped regional integration, how we helped resource mobilisation, and the number of hundreds of people we trained, who got their degrees in economic policy management, and not to mention that one area that is new to us is public heath where we have been working with the Gates Foundation to address tobacco use. So we have strong tobacco control programme which the Gates Foundation has rated to be very successful, because before they were doing things in a disparate fashion. The people they were providing resources to were focussing on activities like they would do a meeting, but we think a programmatic approach will be better and there was no coordination. So what ACBF has done now is to bring everybody together who is working on tobacco, including the World Health Organisation. We told them that this is Africa, other places you can lead but not here. So they asked us to lead. So when they saw how effective and efficient we were in managing the resources and making sure resources are obtained, they came. As a result of that several countries have now passed anti-tobacco laws. You know we strengthened those stakeholders, civil society organisations are empowered now so that they can actually continue to do their anti-tobacco activities. We have developed programmes at the University of Cape Town, the Economics of Tobacco, which looks at alternative crops for tobacco farmers. We look at issues like the impact of taxation on tobacco use. We train people on tobacco industry monitoring because we understand that the tobacco industry is also fighting to make sure that people continue to smoke. They have a strategy to target Nigeria and the DR Congo which they see as a new ground with massive number of young people. Because they are no longer successful in North America and Europe so they are now focusing their attention on Africa to make sure that the youth smoke. They are giving them cigarettes free of charge at concerts to make sure that they expand their market here.

As capacity building organisations, we build human capacity and we don’t want tobacco to destroy the human capacity we build, and so it is appropriate that we pay attention to this public health problem.

Isn’t that interesting, is your host government Zimbabwe happy with you since tobacco growing is a major component of Zimbabwe agriculture and therefore the economy?   

Of course they are. You see this is the interesting dimension. The Zimbabwe government recognises the fact that because the cost of tobacco use is quite significant no matter how you think about it – the health cost and the cost to human life and so forth, because the statistics is not good at all. At the same time, they recognise that tobacco is their number one export product at this point. I have had engagements with the government on this so we are not doing this on a stealth manner. They are fully in support. They say they will even put anti-tobacco laws in place if necessary, but they are faced with a dilemma of having to support tobacco farming which brings a lot of revenue to individuals and the government. One logic is that tobacco is not necessarily consumed in massive numbers internally because they export it. But to respond to your question, no we don’t have any problem with the government.

July 27, 2018 @ 17:25 GMT|