On Africa's Trade Dilemma 1: Core values

James Shikwati = Director, Inter Region Economic Network writes
"African policy makers ought to recognize the fact that all trade deals with both the emerging and developed economies are done purely for purposes of promoting existing business interests. Africa nations cannot have effective trade talks when they exclude the business community in their strategies. One cannot rely on ill equipped civil servants with nothing to lose, politicians with votes to look for, and Non Governmental Organizations that are agents of Western countries to draw a strategic plan on trade talks. The African business community must wake up and take an active role in suggesting approaches that their civil servants ought to carry whenever they go out to negotiate trade issues.

An illustration of the poverty in long term strategic thinking can be demonstrated by the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA)."


IJEBU DRUMS comment:
Increasingly, competitive trade advantage presents dilemmas for African trade in terms of attracting and retaining the educated and talented, value added in regional markets, trans-regional externalisation of exploitation and conflict, and financial imperialism.

Africa's first trade dilemma arises from the mis-orientation of our education and enterprise activities towards markets outside our communities. No body human or politic can prosper while its efforts are devoted so overwhelmingly to alienating itself from its its own while promoting the dominance of its competitors. African communities are hastening into unproductive survivalism at home and abroad.

Education serves to indoctrinate and inform our core values, same as religion and the media. We should actively define our core values and the strategies for attaining them in the short, medium and long term. What do we want? Who are we competing with? What do they want and what are they prepared to do to attain their values? How do we control the education and enterprise systems so to attain our core values? This sort of thinking will force our communities into education curricula and media content very distinct to what is currently taught in our schools and broadcast into our homes.