Business News of Thursday, 21 March 2013
Source: Graphic Business
Natural resource can promote dev – Report
A new publication developed by African experts has debunked the so-called resource curse phenomenon and pointed to success stories around the continent to conclude that with proper management, natural resource wealth can promote development advances in African countries.
The publication, Capacity Development for Natural Resource Management, to be launched in Accra tomorrow, draws on success stories from Botswana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Ghana, Ethiopia, and other countries.
The African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) released the new publication, the third book in its flagship Africa Capacity Indicators series. The series is to further the foundation’s goal of building sustainable, effective institutions and policies to deliver development results for poverty reduction.
A news release issued in Harare, Zimbabwe and made available to the Daily Graphic in Accra said the report drew on lessons learned from those success stories to provide policy recommendations and guidelines for maximising the positive impact of natural resource wealth on Africa’s prospects for achieving sustainable, long-term development and taking its place in the global economy.
The book includes a foreword written by the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Dr Nkosazana Diamini Zuma. The Africa Capacity Indicators series was launched in 2011 to mark the ACBF’s 20th anniversary, and each year the publication addresses one aspect of capacity building and economic development within the African context.
The release said the President of the National House of Chiefs and Member of the Council of State, Naa Professor J. S. Nabila, would join the Executive Secretary of ACBF, Dr Frannie A. Léautier, to launch the report at a High Level Forum being held at the Best Western Premier Hotel in Accra. Thereafter, copies of the book will be made available to the public.
According to the news release, the first volume, Capacity Development in Fragile States, was followed in 2012 by Capacity Development for Agricultural Transformation and Food Security.
“Our goal for this year’s Report was to build on the knowledge base that we developed with the publication of the previous books in this series,” the Head of ACBF’s Knowledge & Learning Department/Coordinator of the ACIR series, Mr Kobena Hanson, said.
He added that last year’s volume highlighted agriculture’s contributions to economic stability and the importance of food security to capacity development.
“Mindful of our findings in that Report, we placed particular emphasis this year on policy recommendations that can help to foster green growth. Taken as a group, the three books we have published to date raise awareness of the extent to which state fragility, agricultural transformation and food security, and natural resource management are linked and how these interconnections contribute to stable, sustainable economic development,” he stated.
The African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF), whose major sponsors include African governments, the African Development Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, and the World Bank, was founded on February 9, 1991 with a mission to build human and institutional capacity for sustainable growth and poverty reduction in Africa.
