The following is a full transcript of the opening remarks made by Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, Chairperson of the African Union Commission, at the press conference of the EU-Africa Summit. She spoke quietly, but put forward some strong ideas for joint progress:
Thank you very much; I’ll just say a few things because I
agree with what has been said by the Presidents and the President of the EU
Commission. First I think it’s important to just recall that Europe and Africa
have a very long history. We also are neighbours. We also have complimentary
comparative advantages that can be used, to strengthen growth for the EU and
Africa. And so the discussions under the theme “peace, prosperity and people”
was very appropriate. The comparative advantages that I will mention are just a
few:
One; Africa has 60% of arable land that is still available
in the world, and so it means we have a lot of land that can be utilised for
agriculture in particular, and this, and at the same time Europe has had a long
experience of growing, processing, adding value to agricultural products. So
these are two comparative advantages, we have the land, they have experience,
we can put them together and we can both win, and we can both take advantage of
this.
The second comparative advantage that we have is our
population. Our population pyramids are in reverse. The African pyramid is
standing on its base; the European pyramid is standing on its head. So it means
Europe is ageing, Africa is young, and will continue to be young and will be
probably the only continent by 2050 which will have a young labour force; the biggest
young labour force. So this can be also used to our comparative advantage. We have
this young population and if we invest in it as every continent, and all of us,
humanity, our most precious resource is our people. So if we invest in this resource,
and we can work together to invest in it, and as the president of the council
said, at the moment we’re getting young people who are professional who come to
Europe to work. They are welcome and they have no problem and nobody wants to
send them back. Then we have many young people who die on the desert or across
the Mediterranean who are not skilled, but who are trying to find greener
pastures in Europe, and those are the ones that create challenges.
But if we concentrate on skilling our people, on investing
in them, they will not have to come through Lampedusa, they’ll come through the
airports and the ports and they’ll be welcome. And they will actually drive the
development in Africa, but they can also contribute because young professionals
are always mobile so they will still come as they are coming even today. So I think that’s also something that we can
look at in the fullness of time and see how we can work together and increase
the investment in the young people.
And of course an Africa that is modernising needs
infrastructure, and we’re not asking so much for grants for infrastructure, you
can get a lot of return for your money, from your sovereign wealth, from business;
they can get returns from our infrastructure. The infrastructure development in
Africa will also assist integration, will assist trade, and will assist in modernising.
It will also assist in tourism. So, that’s another area we have of comparative
advantage. Our beautiful landscapes, our amazing sunsets, our shores, are just
waiting to be explored. So we can work together to build, invest, joint
ventures in the hospitality industry. And of course there is lots more to see
in Africa that you don’t have in Europe and we, we understand that, that patrimony
is not only ours but it’s the patrimony of humanity, and therefore, you are
welcome to come as Europe to enjoy what we have that you may no longer have in
Europe. So that’s another comparative advantage in that I think both the EU as
a Union but also business can take advantage of.
The other comparative advantage is that we have huge oceanic
spaces that we have not really explored. But we want to explore them to ensure
that we build and we grow our blue economy. We want legal exploitation of our
fish, of other resources in the oceans. And I think we can work together,
transfer technology, but share also, what we get from there fairly, and we can sell
to Europe a lot of what we get from our oceans. So there is a lot of
comparative advantage that is complimentary that can be really exploited, then trade,
as we industrialise whether through agriculture or adding value to our mineral
resources, through energy, rebuilding our energy because: the only time I agree
with people who call us “the dark continent” is when we look at our energy
generation, we don’t have enough to light up a continent sufficiently, but we
are working on that, and that’s another area we are industrialising now. You have
industrialised over a long time but you have technologies that can leap-frog us
from the fossil fuels to cleaner renewable energies if we transfer technology
that also can help, and it will help both, we can also generate enough to also
send across the Mediterranean.
So these are some of
the things that really in this partnership in addition to what we are already doing and of course we
can share how we can make full use of the other half of the population, women. We
have some success stories in Africa, you have some success stories in
Europe which we can share. Rwanda has the biggest number of women
parliamentarians in the world. They have more than 60% of women in parliament so;
I think, in Europe there is another, one country that has more than 50%. So we
can share all these experiences and build a very strong and enduring
partnership. The partnership is there, it can be strengthened, it can be enriched,
it can be widened and go deeper. So we think we've had a lot of constructive
discussion around these issues. Now it’s up to us to really implement together.
And together we can be two great continents.
And of course, I'm not saying much about peace because a lot
has been said about it, but I just want to say, they are connected. If we can
ensure that our young people have a stake in the future, they have jobs, they've
got professions, it will be very difficult to entice them to go into crime,
drugs or to be trafficked, or even to go and be recruited to, to kill. It will
be very difficult. So I think both things go together, the one side all the
development issues and on the other, peace. And I also agree that good
governance, respect for human rights, is also very critical, and transparency
in the way we do business and without corruption, without anyone corrupting
another, all of us. And our citizens will understand if we are not corrupt even
if there are still challenges, but the problem is if they see corruption then
they think there is more than there is. So I think we can really work together
on all these issues and Africa is open, and it’s a continent of enormous
opportunities, but opportunities in themselves are not enough. We have to turn
them into real wealth for the people. Thank you.
