DAVOS 2018-Africa prefers fair trade to Marshall Plans – VP Osinbajo

DAVOS 2018-Africa prefers fair trade to Marshall Plans – VP Osinbajo

FRI, JANUARY 26 2018-theG&BJournal-“The idea of the Marshall Plan is to me, in some sense, bringing old solutions to what really is a dynamic problem,” says Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo. He said this while taking questions at an Interactive Session Titled “Stabilizing The Mediterranean” at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, 24 January, 2018.

“I think that what Africa needs and what a lot of the southern neighbours of the Europeans need are fairer trade policies and a cocktail of policies that centre on job creation in those locations, more investments, but I think more thinking through those ideas and policies that creates more opportunities, partnership between Europe and Africa,” he told the audience.

“I don’t think that aid has worked through the years. I think that there’s a need for possibly just much more commitment to the whole process. I mean there have been multi-processes, several of them, but I certainly think that if we look at this as a major global problem and when you look around and look at extremism, terrorism and all of the various things that are exported along with illegal migration, it is a global problem and we really does deserve a global solution and the way to look at that is by coming together to reason these things through, but frankly it is not by those Marshal Plans off the shelf, I think it is more nuanced than that.”

The Vice President also talked about the possibilities around Africa replacing China as the factory of the world in the near future. “I think that probably is in the natural cause of things,” He said.

“Even now, we see that as wage costs go up in China, Africa is becoming the obvious choice for some certain industries, so it is clear that will happen and there are quite a few initiatives in that direction already; there are a few countries like Ivory Coast, Nigeria, with the development of Special Economic Zones, with partnerships coming from China.”

The Vice President said he thinks those sorts of arrangements will very quickly absorb labour because obviously, of the growing populations in Africa and the projections in the next 20 years when we are looking at the youth population, put probably 70% of Africa’s population, about the third largest population in world by then.

Osinbajo also voiced his concerns about the slave dealings in Africa which he says is absolutely horrifying to see that. “I certainly agree that it was a great shock to see actual slave dealings in this century. What we are seeing is a degeneration of criminal activities where you find that state capacity is unable to maintain international human rights norms.”

Osinbajo suggested that one of the crucial things is to encourage repatriation. He said the Nigerian government for example is working with the Libyan government in repatriating everyone who is in the camps. “It is a slow process because there are those who claim nationalities because they see a way out of the camps.”

He told the gathering that he believes there is also a great deal of willingness on the part of those who are in the camps to go back because it is entirely voluntary. There is pressure where there is no state capacity or inadequate state capacity to maintain law and order and international human rights norms. The pressure is a bit too much for the Libyan authorities, so what you find is that the criminal gangs and all of these asymmetric type organizations dominate the space and we may not be able to do much without relieving the Libyan authorities of a lot of the illegal migrants in their custody or their country.