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General News of Tuesday, 20 January 2015

Source: starrfmonline.com

The West will never develop Africa - Akufo-Addo

Nobody but Africans can develop their own Continent, Ghana’s main opposition Leader Nana Akufo-Addo has said.

“I think there’s one simple truth that all of us on the Continent have to recognise; nobody is going to build this African Continent for us but ourselves,” the three-time Flag-bearer of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) said during a discussion about democracy and governance on the BBC on Democracy Day January 20, 2015.

“Europeans will not do it; when they involve themselves with Africa, they have their own goals, which they have been serving for centuries,” AKufo-Addo said.

“The only people who are capable of building the Africa that we want of the future, are ourselves, and we can do it and we are best able to do it if we are focusing on creating the institutions of governance in our countries that allow us to do so… Western media has its own goals when it is projecting Africa and we must have our own goals as well,” he added.

The former Attorney General’s observations comes on the heels of similar comments made by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in an earlier interview with the BBC.

The Ghanaian diplomat told the world broadcaster that the West can only help to some extent but cannot solve the Continent’s problems.

Responding to a question about the recent international outpouring of solidarity with French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, following an attack on its office by an Islamist militant group, which led to the killing of 12 journalists, vis-à-vis the apparent silence of the international community on the killing of hundreds of Nigerians in Baga by Islamist militant group Boko Haram, a few days earlier, Mr Annan said: “I think we have to be realistic, people always pay more attention to dangers which are immediate to them and threaten all of them.”

“The nature of that attack in Paris caused lots of tension in Europe. Other cities were saying: ‘What’s next, who is next?’ So there was a strong sense of that solidarity, with everybody coming together to make their position known,” Annan observed.

In his view, Africans should also begin showing such support to each other rather than expecting the international community to come solve their problems for them.

“What I wish is that we also, on this continent sometimes we show the same solidarity in support of each other to begin with and then expect the international community to come in.

“They can help but they cannot solve the problems for us,” Annan stressed.