PRESIDENT RAMAPOSA DENIES FUSS ON AFRICAN COUNTRIES BEING LED INTO DEBT TRAP.
The President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa has denied the allegations that numbers of African countries in Africa are being led into a debt trap as they take up loans to fund a certain number of projects.
Ramaphosa dropped this hint during his weekly address from the desk of the President in Cape town after his return from the Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi last Week “ One need only look at initiatives such as the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, which was last held in
Beijing in 2018 to see that the focus is now on partnership for mutual benefit on development, trade and investment and integration,” he said.
President Ramaposa disagreed with comments which tag initiatives like the recent Russia-Africa Summit as an attempt by world powers to expand their geopolitical influence.
African Countries had committed to the summit and used the opportunity to discuss ways on how to increase trade and cooperation between Russia and Africa saying the summit was a sign of the growing economic importance of Africa on the world stage.
“What we are witnessing is a dramatic rebalancing of the relationship between the world’s advanced economies and the African Continent,” Ramaphosa explained.
The South Africa President noted that Africa had overtime declared that Africa no longer wants to be passive recipients of foreign aid, he said.
He further explained that African countries are developing and their economies are increasingly in need of foreign direct investment.
“We are mindful of our colonial history, where the economies of Europe were able to industrialize and develop by extracting resources from Africa, all the while leaving the colonies underdeveloped,” Ramaphosa said. President Ramaphosa noted that up till now, Africa countries are still trying to stop the extraction of its resources, this time in the form of illicit financial flows through a commercial business, tax evasion, transfer pricing and illegal activities that cost the continent more than 50 billion dollars a year.
He further noted that the age where “development” was imposed from outside without taking into account the material conditions and respective requirements of our countries are now past.
“China, Russia, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries and other large economies are eager to forge greater economic ties with African countries.
“This is because they want to harness the current climate of reform, the deepening of good governance,
macro-economic stability and the opening up of economies across the continent for mutual benefit,”
the president said.
what do you think about this Romance? Is this another scramble for Africa? pls, leave your comment below.