Two important meets of great consequences did take place in South Africa in the last few days-the second edition of the Africa Investment Summit and the Cape Town Oil Conference. The former was designed to accelerate the flow of investment into the Continent and the latter was to evolve a coordinated stand of the African oil producing countries, who, most often, are being shorthanded by the larger oil groupings like OPEC or by the bullying tactics of the US or by internecine rivalry and animosity among them (oil producing countries in Africa).
Let us start with the Investment Conference. Africa, to ensure sustainable development goals set out by the UN Charter, needs close to US$ 600 billion investment. Of that, US$ 130 billion is meant to address the physical infrastructure gap. The investments of such magnitude has to be mobilized mostly from external sources/investors.
When capital is scarce and there is keen competition even among developed world to attract investments from other investing countries including emerging economies, to expect that the FDI would flow on its own, is foolhardiness or to put it mildly, a wishful thinking. Media plays an important role in hawking the investment climate across the world. Those investors may not be from the US, Russia or China. Emerging economies like India, Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia etc have an increasing number of investors, who are looking for investments abroad and they often scout for lesser known countries and areas. For instance, Indian companies like Airtel, TATA, Escorts, Apollo, Infosys, Mahindra, Shapoorji Pallonji etc have a lot of investments in various countries in Africa and the number of corporations looking beyond India is growing, particularly in sectors like ICT, telecom, food processing,manufacturing etc.
Yet, the information, intensity of the investment meets or even mere mention of such events is drawing a blank in investing countries. This could be due to inadequate media build-up or conscious indifference to media support to publicize about such events. The objectives behind our two digital platforms –www. trendsnafrica.com and Africa4U – are to act as an information highway to amplify such events taking place in Africa and to give them world-wide attention. We are committed to do that diligently and as objectively as possible.
The story behind the Cape Town Oil Conference is different. It was marked by wide spread demonstrations of environmental activists, who thought the gathering was purely a get-together of oil miners, traders, government officials and lobbyists, who are trying to tweak polices to benefit from huge bounty of resources unleashed by the oil sector both legally and illegally by riding roughshod over environment concerns. Paradoxically, the objective set out for the conference did not find it contextual and relevant to mention about climate change, while Africa is in the clutch of climate change that is taking a heavy toll on human lives, properties and quality of life.
Despite the fact that the two meetings were over only the other day, there is a near blackout in the media about the quintessence of these two forums, tenor of discussions, conclusions and takeaways. Should Africa engage itself only on organizing the event without ever bothering about how well they are received and the feedback from the stakeholders and the like. Admittedly, such an approach is myopic when there are media groups like ours, which have the expertise, reach and commitment to espouse a noble cause.
