Africa needs to 'control its own destiny'
The continued control of African countries by their former colonial masters was one of the main contributors to crises on the continent, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday.Addressing parliamentarians from African countries at the 38th Commonwealth Parliamentary Association meeting in parliament, Mbeki said there was an urgent need for Africans to take full control of their own destiny."..After the wave of independence, manly in the 1960s, a combination of factors that brought about numerous crises in our countries ensured that our continent was placed under de facto trusteeship, with programmes and policies for Africa's development drawn-up by people who were not only not African, but were, in many instances, those who had been our colonial masters."To defeat this neo-colonial stranglehold, we have developed our own path of development, as reflected in the Constitutive Act authorising the establishment of the African Union, and the AU development and reconstruction programme, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD)," he said.The continent's members of parliament, Mbeki said, had an important role to play in ensuring the implementation of these programmes."This must surely mean that your oversight function as parliamentarians includes oversight over the implementation of the Constitutive Act," he said.He hailed the setting up of the Pan-African Infrastructure Development Fund as one of the most important milestones in the continent's march to independence."Of critical and historic importance is the fact that the entirety of the capital of the fund, currently amounting to $625-million, originates exclusively from within our continent."We are confident that within the next 12 months the capital base of the ...fund will reach $1-billion," he said. - Sapa
The continued control of African countries by their former colonial masters was one of the main contributors to crises on the continent, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday.Addressing parliamentarians from African countries at the 38th Commonwealth Parliamentary Association meeting in parliament, Mbeki said there was an urgent need for Africans to take full control of their own destiny."..After the wave of independence, manly in the 1960s, a combination of factors that brought about numerous crises in our countries ensured that our continent was placed under de facto trusteeship, with programmes and policies for Africa's development drawn-up by people who were not only not African, but were, in many instances, those who had been our colonial masters."To defeat this neo-colonial stranglehold, we have developed our own path of development, as reflected in the Constitutive Act authorising the establishment of the African Union, and the AU development and reconstruction programme, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD)," he said.The continent's members of parliament, Mbeki said, had an important role to play in ensuring the implementation of these programmes."This must surely mean that your oversight function as parliamentarians includes oversight over the implementation of the Constitutive Act," he said.He hailed the setting up of the Pan-African Infrastructure Development Fund as one of the most important milestones in the continent's march to independence."Of critical and historic importance is the fact that the entirety of the capital of the fund, currently amounting to $625-million, originates exclusively from within our continent."We are confident that within the next 12 months the capital base of the ...fund will reach $1-billion," he said. - Sapa
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