Africa should focus on identifying its existing capacities and strengths and build up on them to translate Africa’s economic growth to poverty reduction instead of adopting a deficit-based approach of focusing on what is wrong, said the Africa Capacity Building Foundation’s (ACBF) Executive Secretary, Prof. Emmanuel Nnadozie, at the Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP) Public Policy Forum held on Thursday afternoon in Nairobi, Kenya.
According to Prof. Nnadozie, the impressive work done in improving capacities of African countries for sound macroeconomic policies has acted as a driver of economic growth in Africa. The areas Africa should focus on are: building on its success in economic growth, improved quality of the leadership, prioritizing investment to critical sectors that can enhance productive employment, skill development and regional integration.
He also pointed out that Africa should put more emphasis and effort in the effective use of its existing resources.
The ACBF participation in the Conference brought capacity dimension to the theme, highlighting the importance of building capacities for the formulation and implementation of economic policies as well as the need for improved quality of leadership towards poverty reduction.
The High-Level forum’s theme was “Unlocking Africa’s Growth for Productive Employment and Poverty Reduction” and formed part of the 12th Annual Conference of PEP.
Researchers from different countries presented and discussed research results from ongoing PEP-supported projects and presented new research proposals under PEP research and capacity building initiative for Policy Analysis on Growth and Employment (PAGE).