Foundation to support Nigeria, other African countries on industrialisation

African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) says it will support Nigeria and other African countries in capacity building efforts aimed at promoting regional industrialisation.

Prof. Emmanuel Nnadozie, the Executive Secretary of ACBF, gave the assurance in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja

He said that the new strategic programme of the foundation, which would run for five years, would particularly aim at ensuring positive results in various capacity building projects for African countries.

“The vision of ACBF is to see an Africa that is capable of achieving its own development; starting from next year, we will launch our new five-year strategy.

“So, this strategy that will run from 2017 to 2021 essentially tries to provide ways through which Africa can achieve its own development by building human capacity and institutional capacity; promoting and building capacity in line with the countries’ specific needs.’’

Nnadozie said that the capacity building efforts would also focus on developing leadership capacity; changes in mindset, in attitudes and in the way people did business.

He added that strategy specifically targeted at those areas, which were hitherto identified by countries as their critical areas.

“The number one area, being the fact that almost every African country wants to be industrialised because the countries want to diversify their economies and become less dependent on primary commodity export,’’ he said.

He said that the challenges facing Nigeria included insecurity, inadequate infrastructure, slow industrialisation and youth unemployment, adding that the foundation’s focus would, therefore, be on those areas as its priority areas of intervention in efforts to support the country.

Nnadozie said that the theme of his discussions with the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osibanjo, was on the new direction of policy implementation.

He noted that in the case of Nigeria, proper implementation of policies often remained a major challenge

He gave the assurance that the foundation would provide the needed capacity for Nigeria and other African countries in efforts achieve their policy goals.

Nnadozie, however, commended the Federal Government for its continued support to ACBF adding that Nigeria was one of the 12 countries that were at the forum where ACBf was created 25 years ago.

“Nigeria has since continued to support ACBF and I am happy that the government said that it would continue to support us.

“But the support which countries give in terms of their contribution is not necessarily what we use in our capacity-building activities because we need far more than that.

“A larger proportion, about 70 per cent of our finance, comes from other sources. The contribution of African countries like Nigeria helps us to leverage other resources,’’ he added

He said that since 1991, Nigeria had contributed about five million dollars to ACBF, adding, however, that the foundation had spent about 26 million dollars on capacity-building activities in Nigeria during the period.