Dr. Obiageli Ezekwesili, former Minister of Education, has urged African nations to spend more in youth, women, and technology to boost the continent’s dwindling GDP.
At the introduction of her School of Politics, Policy, and Governance’s Big Ideas platform, the ex-minister said this.
The Big Ideas Platform helps generate and share new ideas, creative solutions, and implementation techniques to address Africa’s many issues.
The former Vice President of the World Bank’s Africa region believes that Africa’s vast resources and young population should not leave its people in abject poverty.
I’ve frequently said there are three game changers for our country, and they were on display tonight. Youth change our continent most. Africa’s median age is 18.6 years, compared to 40+ worldwide.
This is the youngest continent. Youth are so locked up. African youth are proving they can compete worldwide.
“And that despite some of the challenges that hold them back due to poor governance, if they find their feats, they can even surpass the ideas that others put forward. African youth have changed economics.
Africa’s most inconsequential revolution was technology.
African woman. That’s evident. Data says Africa can improve its GDP by $360 billion by 2025.
“We just need to include our women in the developing process, and Africa stands a chance of such an increase in its GDP, considering the continent’s GDP is still a paltry $2.3 trillion. Gender imbalance holds so much.
“We were not really that much part of the early days of the knowledge revolution, but the ICT revolution has been our first participation and not even as a major producer of ideas, but just a consumer, we already began to learn how to participate in producing innovations within it.
“Even if you are the most pessimistic person, you have absolutely no business leaving today’s program without boasting of optimism, that our young people and women joined with the capacity that technology offers, we will definitely be the ones that will determine the 21st century,” Ezekwesili said.
Dr. Salihu Lukman, the North-West National Vice Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), stated most of Nigeria’s problems were due to political parties’ failures.
Since 1999, Nigeria has not had a political party that is obviously functional and democratically operating its operations to offer democracy to the people, the politician said.
The APC leader said that Nigerians, especially politicians, simply use political parties to find candidates for elections.
