Africa is the most resource-rich continent on Earth, but European and Asian countries are the main ones who benefit from its wealth. During the opening of the African Leadership Forum in 2018, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame urged African leaders to stop receiving foreign aid from non-African countries.
In a recent Guardian opinion piece, he noted that despite having such an abundance of natural resources and the means to acquire it, “major players in global investment and development are discussing Africa without engaging its people as equal partners … Africans are not seen to be proactive in setting their own priorities and terms of engagement.”
Africans will prosper through integrative trading across nations and “not begging for aid,” Kagame says. “We have to take responsibility for the misallocation of Africa’s resources and take steps to correct that.”
He backs up his grand vision with actions, becoming one of the first African leaders to sign the African Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA), which will bring together 54 African countries with a combined population of more than one billion people and a combined gross domestic product of more than $3.4 trillion together in development partnerships.
The CFTA is set to significantly increase trade within Africa, and consequently improve the economy. Kagame could not have said it better in his keynote address: “We gain immeasurably by trading with each other, and lose so much when we don’t.”