Why Africa’s development is stunted — Prof Mimiko

A Professor of political science, Femi Mimiko, said Africa the development of Africa remains stunted despite its potential for rapid growth, saying the continent’s economy lies in the doldrums despite spirited efforts at revival.

Mimiko who stated this while delivering the 2024 convocation lecture of the Joseph Ayo Babalola University (JABU), Ikeji Arakeji, Osun State, said Africa’s ability to emerge as a major player on the world’s stage is being thwarted by leadership governance crises.

According to Mimiko, while speaking on the theme: ‘Beyond Potentialities: Our Place in Africa’s Sustained Leadership, Governance, and Development Crises’, said the crises is rooted in longstanding structural deficiency.

He noted that the systemic challenges had continued to limit the continent’s development, saying Africa must urgently engage its youthful population in finding solutions to the barriers, particularly with its ranking as the second largest population of youths in the world.

The former Vice-Chancellor of Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko (AAUA), however, said everyone has a share in the actions and inactions that constitute the basis of crises in Africa.

Mimiko said without necessary reformation, the prevailing structures of governance will continue to throw up inadequate leaders for the people.

He lamented that despite enormous resources and talent endowed with Africa, the continent had continued to be on the sidelines of global progress due to ineffective governance and leadership.

He however, called for a united effort to harness Africa’s potential, saying that the time for action is now, lest the continent miss out on the opportunities that lie ahead.

He said, “In spite of all the putative progress made on the African continent, elections are still being badly conducted, and results are still being violently contested. Military coups d’états are still displacing elected governments.

“Most of the African states are still being badly managed; the continent remains the hungriest and most poverty-stricken on planet earth, and there are projections that by 2050, it would be home to 86% of the population of the poor, globally.

“The African continent still fully lies in the domain of potentialities. Indeed, it is arguable that the challenges of today appear more widespread and more debilitating and are tearing away at the future of the younger generations of Africans more forcefully, fearfully, and determinedly than they had ever been.

“By IMF projections, by 2027, Africa should ordinarily be the fastest-growing economy in the world. Yet, a humongous 26.1 percent of African youths are NEET: non-employed, non-educated, and non-trained. Some 43.2 percent (103.6 million) of the world’s out-of-school children are in Africa; half of African youths aged between 18 and 24 are considering migrating if their governments do not buckle up.

“Africa accounts for only three percent of global GDP but 18 percent of world population. The African economy is thus smaller than the individual economies of the UK, Germany, and Japan. Intra-African trade at 12.1 percent remains the lowest; as against intra-European trade at 66.9 percent.

“Road network in the US is twice that of Africa, even when the former has only one-third of Africa’s size, and one-fifth of its population.

“The four out of five people without electricity in the world, live in Africa; with Japan consuming more electricity than the whole of Africa in 2019, even at one-tenth of its population.”

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