Adesina to African leaders:Build industries to create more jobs

*When you export raw material, that’s the door to poverty *Africa can’t rely on benevolence of others

President of the African Development Bank Group (AfDB), Dr Akinwumi Adesina, has called on African leaders to build industries to create more jobs for the teeming youths.

Dr. Adesina, who will wrap up his tenure as the president of the AfDB in September this year, while reflecting on the effects of cuts in aid by the US and other foreign nations, said, Africa cannot rely on the benevolence of others.

“If you want to create more jobs, build industries; when you export a raw material, that’s the door to poverty,” Dr Adesina said in an exclusive interview with the BBC.

He looked back at his achievements with the AfDB and the challenges that lie ahead for Africa and the future beyond foreign aid and said, “You can’t just depend on the benevolence of others. Benevolence is not a strategy, investment is a strategy. There is no substitute to actual hard-nose investment in which you bring in private capital to unlock all of your assets. I have been on record, and I will always want to be on record. I don’t believe that the future of Africa’s youth lies in Europe; it doesn’t lie in the United States or anywhere else.

“We have to build a highly competitive industrial value chain that we can trade among ourselves, we can get the skills, some of the people that are leaving, and they come back. You can invest in, for example, in manufacturing lithium ion, precursor batteries in DR Congo is three times less than in the United States, Poland or China. When we build those things, we retain talent, we attract talent, and our young people would do that. So, if you want to create more jobs, build industries, when you export a raw material, that’s the door to poverty.”

Dr. Adesina said his world view has been shaped by his life story, and shared with the BBC how having grown up in poverty helped shape his world view.

“For me, inequality is not something that is a theoretical concept. I went to a village school in which I had to walk kilometers to go find water and so I know very well how that is; poverty is not Statistics. There is a mother, there is a child, there is a farmer, and there is a rural community that needs access to water, electricity, sanitation and health,” he said.

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