African Governance Report 2019 is out. There is a raging debate going on whether the continent’s growth is in the right direction to chase the target of an African Union by 2063. www.trandsnafrica.com has carried a critique of the report.
Indeed, lack of data hamstrings an objective evaluation of the progress of Agenda 2063, a euphemism for African Union. The report has called for earliest closing of data gaps in all spheres including economic, healthcare, educational, political and cultural. Let that not be a pious wish of the governments and institutions because the progress that is being made by the continent, which has 54 countries, 1.2 billion people and maze of inherent challenges such as poverty, destitution, illiteracy, internal and internecine conflicts need a strong data base to measure the development indices and for taking course corrections.
More than that, every country- small, medium or large –should realize that African Union is an achievable benchmark and their collective and creative energies should be channelized and dovetailed to achieve that goal: lest it would remain as a rhetoric.
Africa4U has picked up a single component of the sustainable goal -free movement of people in the continent. One may ask why it is so hard for Africans to visit other African countries. Is it mutual mistrust, unemployment, official laxity, higher price for visas, lack of transport faculties to travel within the content or xenophobia? The answer is: it is the combination of all.
The Nigerian business tycoon, who has business interests across the continent and beyond has famously said in 2016 that he needed 38 visas to move around Africa. Things would not have changed much ever since. An African passport was launched in 2016, which is eventually to replace the individual nations’ passports. But that category of passport is available only to heads of states and senior diplomats. It is a far cry for a professional or a skilled worker, who can offer his services to other countries and can contribute substantially to an orderly growth..
The insistence of the Kenyan government to select a local person to head the privately owned Safaricom after the untimely demise of its legendry chief executive Guyanese –born Robert William Collymore , is well known. That is not a one off example, rather a common happening than an exception across the continent. If that is the case for the top executives, one can well imagine the case of an ordinary executive or a skilled worker. Less said the better about Xenophobia outbursts on workers and traders in South Africa, Nigeria and Ghana, which run contrary to the spirit of African Union.
Let not the borderless Africa a poignant emotive theme, but a necessary condition for the orderly growth of the continent. Indeed, more efforts and imaginative planning are needed to achieve that goal.
