Imagining the future of Africa 2025 - Environmental Chalenges

The growth in most African countries is not sustainable because most African countries relies on donor funding, loans to fund government programmes and are unable to provide basic needs to majority of their people. The Economic Report on Africa 2013 stated that “African countries have a real opportunity, individually and collectively, to promote economic transformation and to address poverty, inequality and youth unemployment. They can capitalize on their resource endowments and high international commodity prices as well as changes in how global production processes are organized”.

Africa has abundant resources and needs to use its resources to its advantage, African countries should support each other and avoid exporting their resources as raw materials. Hence African countries needs set up manufacturing industries which will add value to African resources before their exported out of the continent, this will help create more jobs to millions of unemployed African youth and will make Africa a self-reliant continent. Trade, unity and support (financial, strategic, human resource etc.) among African countries should increase by 2025 to make the African growth more sustainable and inclusive.

Failure to transform has been the main reason why most African countries still remain fragile to external shocks and high sustainable growth seem impossible to achieve. Transformation will require these countries to diversify and industrialize their economies, which can be looked at in terms of employment, commodities produced, commodities sold to foreign countries.  According to Africa-BRICS cooperation report on Implications for Growth, Employment and structural Transformation in Africa, “Countries blessed with resource endowments have a duty to themselves and to other African countries to embark on an industrial strategy aimed at maximizing backward and forward processing linkages from the commodity sectors.”

Rural-urban migration is another major challenge facing Africa, hence African countries need to decentralize development, create more jobs in rural areas, encourage and integrate rural communities in the mainstream economy without having to migrate. Africa should invest in initiatives such solar energy, wind energy as alternatives to provide cheaper, clean and more accessible energy to its people. African countries should share their resources with each, e.g. dry countries such as Namibia, Botswana etc. should be able to pump water from the huge water reserve in and around central Africa (DR Congo, Congo Brazzaville) to use it for farming and drinking.

African countries should take charge (become their own masters) and should come up with African ideas and initiatives to address African problems and challenges with minimal outside interference in the African agenda. This doesn’t imply that Africa will not require international (outside) assistance, but suggest that African development will highly depend on Africans developing their own solutions.