Delivering a speech at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP 26) underway in Glasgow, Scotland, President Nana AddoDankwaAkufo-Addoexpressed disappointment in the rest of the world for demanding that Africa abandon the exploitation of its abundant natural resources as a way of helping to address climate change.
He explained that the natural resources constituted the Africa’s best shot at development and ability to cope better with climate change.
He made it clear that his disappointment was also in the failure of wealthy nations failing to honour their commitments of making available US$100 billion annually to poorer countries, obviously most of them in Africa, to assist them in the fight against climate change.
He further expressed worry that the development of these same nations making the unfair demand on Africa was hinged on the exploitation of the continent’s natural resources at the expense of pollution and the emission of greenhouse gases.
He supported his statement with the fact that the western world was responsible for 76 per cent of carbon emissions with less than four percent of the global volume coming from Africa, but the continent was suffering the most because its resource-driven economies were peculiarly susceptible to the effects of climate change, and its capacity to withstand the shocks was weak.
The President has broached a conversation which is long-overdue probably because other African leaders lacked the boldness to do so, or thought it was business as usual.
It may be that the other African leaders are afraid of incurring the displeasure of the western world and losing the chance of receiving handouts from them.
President Akufo-Addo’s boldness must be commended and respected by his peers and, together, accept it that Africa cannot continue to go to the western world cup-in-hand.
Already, President Akufo-Addo has launched his vision of ‘Ghana beyond aid’, which should be adopted by the rest of Africa, because it is the spirit behind such a vision that can build boldness, resilience and the desire to work hard in order to win Africa off begging.
African leaders must not lose sight of the fact that the demands the West makes on them are meant to perpetuate the impoverishment of Africa so that they can always have the upper hand in dictating its development.
Just as President Akufo-Addo said, climate change is negatively impacting critical economic activities in Africa such as agriculture and so addressing effects of the phenomenon is paramount.
Therefore, African leaders must urgently find ways to raise the US$3 trillion the African Development Bank (AfDB) estimates as needed “in mitigation and adaptation by 2030” to implement nationally-determined contributions.
After all, even if developed nations give their US$100 billion annually to only Africa, that would not be enough to fight against climate change.
Looking at the fact that the whole of Africa has Gross Domestic Product of about $3 trillion, the AfDB estimate is an impossibility, yet African leaders must know that no one can help Africa better than themselves.
Therefore, they must check all the economic ills like corruption and profligate spending.
The Africa Union estimates that $140 billion is lost through corruption annually in Africa.
Think about,if the other outlets through which Africa loses money are sealed!