The African Capacity Building Foundation and other development partners have an important role to play in producing good quality leadership and ensuring accountability for sustainable human development and structural transformation in Africa, the Executive Secretary of the Foundation, Prof. Emmanuel Nnadozie, said yesterday in Abuja. Prof. Nnadozie, who was the keynote speaker at a Presidential Summit on the Millennium Development Goals in the Nigerian capital, said the ACBF would continue to disseminate knowledge and experience on leadership and accountability tapping based on work it has done and lessons learned from its operations throughout the continent.
“The Foundation will also continue funding and supporting capacity building initiativesfor leadership and accountability mainly through support to local and central governments, training programmes, and the creation of, and support to, think tanks,” he said. ACBF will in addition build strategic partnership with other development partners for leadership development and a culture of accountability, said the Executive Secretary.
The lecture, titled “Leadership and accountability: twin pillars for the achievement of human development and structural transformation,” was in three segments. The first one looked at concept and drivers of both human development and structural transformation as well as what a transformed Nigeria would look like. The second section linked human development and structural transformation as pillars of the MDGs and post-2015 development agenda to leadership and accountability. The third segment focused on the role of parliaments in promoting accountable leadership that can achieve human development and structural transformation, with the Nigerian National Assembly’s National Instituted of Legislative Studies, which is supported by the African Capacity Building Foundation, as an example.
The conference was attended by Nigeria’s federal and state government officials led by Vice President Namdi Sambo, development partners, legislators, and civil society organizations. The Summit’s main objective was to review the implementation of the MDGs in Nigeria, highlighting best practices and key achievements to national economic transformation. The theme of the two-day conference was “The MDGs and socio-economic transformation of Nigeria: post 2015 and beyond.”
In addition to participating in the Summit, Prof. Nnadozie also appeared as a guest on African Independent Television, the country’s leading private national broadcaster. The AIT morning discussion programme examined the role of human and institutional capacity development in economic transformation. He fielded questions ranging from the work of ACBF in boosting capacity development in Africa and on ways of sustaining the continent’s current robust economic growth.
