Africa – 11 June 2015
World Economic Forum Africa 2015: Predicting Africa’s future is tricky, but we still must dream
If the market will allow it, the next 25 years will be a golden opportunity for even stronger growth in Africa.
BUSINESS, political and civil society leaders gathering in Cape Town this week for Africa’s World Economic Forum have a hard task in front of them. They have set themselves the challenge of analysing progress since the first event 25 years ago and “re-imagining” the continent’s future.
The truth, however, is that even 15 years ago very few people predicted what has happened in Africa since the turn of the century. The pessimists about the continent were very much in the majority.
Few would have predicted a decade and a half of economic growth well above the global average, a remarkable increase in inward investment and a rapidly rising middle class.
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Message from WEF is SA and Africa are ‘open for business’: Zuma
The clear message emerging from the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Africa meeting held in Cape Town this week was that South Africa and the African continent are ideal investment destinations and that they are open for business‚ President Jacob Zuma says.
Describing the meeting as a tremendous success‚ he said it would have a positive impact on South Africa and the African continent.
He added that the South African delegation‚ which had comprised Cabinet Ministers‚ Premiers‚ Deputy Ministers‚ Metropolitans Executive Mayors‚ Brand SA Ambassadors and businesspeople‚ had managed to market the country very well.
Sowetan
Why Africa’s young people should turn to entrepreneurship
Considering the depressed state of the formal job market in Africa, it’s a good thing that more and more youth in Sub-Saharan Africa are looking to entrepreneurship to secure their future. Young people on the continent are more upbeat about their ability to become entrepreneurs than their peers in any other region, according to a recent global study.
As many as 60% of 18 to 34-year-olds on the continent who took part in a joint study by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) and Youth Business International (YBI) were optimistic about the availability of good business opportunities, and believed they had the skills and knowledge to start a business.
World Economic Forum
Botswana MP accuses Central Africa of bulldozing PAP leadership elections
Leader of the Botswana delegation to the Pan African Parliament and lawmaker for Gaborone Central Phenyo Butale has accused Central African countries of refusing to relinquish power at the pan-African body meeting that took place in South Africa last week, APA learnt here on Monday.Butale told Yarona FM radio station that despite an agreement that the parliament’s leadership would be rotated through African regions, members from Central African nations prevailed and forced that there should be an election.
“They said the agreement was a gentleman’s agreement therefore it cannot be used in formal proceedings,” he said.
Butale however revealed that some of the Botswana legislators were appointed to several committees at the African Parliament.
Star Africa
African conflicts set to dominate agenda at AU summit
The upcoming AU summit in South Africa will likely see issues such as Boko Haram and the Burundi protests steal attention away from development talks.
The leaders of the 54 members states of the African Union (AU) will be meeting for their 25th ordinary summit just after the expected launch in Egypt on Wednesday of a Tripartite Free Trade area (TFTA) spanning 26 countries of Southern and Eastern Africa and creating a market of 625-million people with a gross domestic product of more than $1-trillion.
It will combine the free trade areas of the Southern African Development Community, the East African Community and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa.
The creation of the TFTA – which is envisaged as a stepping stone to an Africa-wide free trade area by 2017 – comes on top of more than a decade of plus-five percent a year growth on average in African economies.
It is on the agenda of this week’s AU summit in South Africa where the theme is how to increase the empowerment and development of women.
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