allAfrica.com: Africa: A "Continental Strategy" For Building Africa Infrastructure Needed

Africa: A "Continental Strategy" For Building Africa Infrastructure Needed - Wade

In the final part of the interview Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade details his architectural vision for the Dakar, capital city of the West African nation he leads, and discusses what he calls his "Plan Omega" for Africa, which he presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January.

Q: At Davos, Presidents Thabo Mbeki (of South Africa) and Olusegun Obasanjo (of Nigeria) also presented a sort of Marshall Plan for Africa. You also have a plan, and have spoken about it in Senegal, Le Plan Omega. Is it the same thing or do you have an alternative plan and why don't African leaders get together and present a common programme?

A: Let me tell you what happened. I have been working on a plan for Africa for a long time. That's my profession, that's my background. I didn't wait to be called on by Africa to study this.

I came up with a plan, with my experience as the leader of Senegal, and came to the conclusion that the daily battle we fight here is a struggle without hope. Because, if we are really to get involved in globalisation - and we are all for globalisation and for privatization - with the infrastructure and education problems of the sort we have here in Africa, then we will never make it.

The industrialized countries don't have these problems. They have the infrastructure and education built into the system, whereas we are behind with both infrastructure and education. That's why I came up with this plan, not the sort of Third World plan where we ask for everything, no. I have been scientific about this. My specialty is econometrics. So, I have built up a system based up on Keynesian theory. One hears that Keynes has become outmoded, but I disagree. The neo-Keynesians are the ones making the world economy work.

It's a bit long to explain, but there are monetarists and budgetary people who are all the offspring of Keynes. Those who pretend to be original are nothing of the sort. It's very easy to show that the monetary theory of Keynes is still relevant, perhaps not in Keynesian dimensions, but it still applies.

But for me, a Third World man, the situation resembles what happened in England after the war (WW II). So, when I quote Keynes, there's nothing unusual about it. The model of development aid has failed, spoon feeding and credit have failed. The proof? Whoever lends money these days knows perfectly well that the debtors will not be able to pay it back. Let's be serious. You give development aid now, and in five or ten years, that debt has to be rescheduled. That is not rational, lending to someone who you know perfectly well will not be able to pay back.

I mean if you go into your bank, and you have no money or are in the red, your bank manager is not going to lend you money. He is thinking rationally, he is realistic. But the donors are obliged to lend to us, knowing perfectly well that the money will not be paid back.

I say, let's look for resources. And I'll explain now how I intend to find those resources. Long-term financing should be for infrastructure and education. And I'm not going around with my hand stretched out, I'll look for the funds myself. So the financing would be partly funded from resources we have. The other half would be long-term credit to finance infrastructure and education.

Now, why do I say these funds should be established by the United Nations, and managed by an international structure under the auspices of the UN? Because we would transfer our own funds from the donors.

Q: But concretely what is your Omega Plan?

A: It is a personal idea that I've been working on for sometime now because of the failure of methods of financing the development of Africa. If we carry on how we're currently financing road building and infrastructure, piecemeal, with all the funds from bilateral aid, the World Bank, from the European Union - I bet you that in fifty years, we will still be building. Nothing will be finished. Take small Senegal, 190 thousand square kilometres, nothing will be finished.

So mine is a long-term plan to find the finance we need for an all-out campaign to build infrastructure. And here, I'm talking about roads, ports, airports, railways etc.

How do we find these resources? Well, let me first say that we have the resources from multilateral and bilateral cooperation. What we should do is to manage these resources at a global level, rather than every country managing its own -- a continental rather than a national strategy.

Why you may ask, what will it change? Because a global vision is more realistic at the continental level - and I'm talking about railways etc - rather than at a national level. So what I'm proposing is the creation of a multilateral authority which would answer directly to the United Nations and which would manage all the resources and would deal with investment.

Secondly: the bigger countries would be able to place treasury bonds, as a guarantee, so that we could obtain long-term resources. Now, that wouldn't bother them, because we would reimburse the money within a certain period, and they would not have to hand out money. I am not re-inventing the wheel. The United States has already done it - in Latin America and in Mexico.

web allafrica.com	Enter your search terms	Submit search form
OR subscribers use AllAfrica's premium search engine


Use our pull-down menus to find more stories

Today's Most Active Stories