The Deputy Speaker of the 54th Legislature, Cllr. J. Fonati Koffa, has called for a paradigm shift in the dreams and construct of the Pan Africanism Movement if the continent is to ever be unified and its people empowered.
Speaking at the 8th Edition of the Africa Summit in London, the United Kingdom, on Tuesday, July 11, Koffa told African stakeholders and bilateral and multilateral partners that priorities for the African people need to be rethought or rearranged.
“There must be a new Pan African movement for economic growth,” Representative Koffa told the gathering at Committee Room G, House of Lords, in London.
The Deputy Speaker’s call comes at a time when the continent is grappling with the struggle for political unity through Pan-Africanism after over fifty years.
It is clearly evident that the dream of a unified African Continent, as accentuated in the context of Pan Africanism, has yet to be achieved since the 1960s, more than 50 years when the vision gained global attention and African consciousness at a peak.
Political unity has been the crux of the Pan-Africanism movement–which, in its narrowest political manifestation, envisions a unified African nation where all people of the African can live, is far from being realized and may not even be any time soon.
The idea is that peoples of African descent have common interests and should be unified. Historically, Pan-Africanism has often taken the shape of a political or cultural movement, but Koffa told the gathering in London that it is high time for this to change.
He said though the West has succeeded in democratizing the African continent, it is now time for the UK and other western nations to intensify trade relations with Africa rather than perpetuating the giving of handouts through the form of aid.
“Now is the time to embrace trade, not aid, so that we can be true partners and an African market of 1.2 billion people will become a bastion of sophisticated consumers and not just victims of a world order which is in the ash heap of history, subjects of a guilt-ridden world who prefers to render pity and charity as a means of assuaging guilt that holds no one accountable and yet leaves no one better off.
The Africa Summit 2023, organized by the African Leadership Magazine (ALM), featured a series of conversations on the future of African trade, as well as showcase Africa’s business and investment opportunities to the rest of the world.
It brought together policymakers, private sector leaders, civil society leaders, political leaders, and all other stakeholders in Europe, the US, and Africa to discuss issues that would prepare the private sector leaders for a more integrated and competitive African trade environment.
As one of the speakers at the event, Deputy Speaker Koffa told the audience that it is also now time for Africa to reevaluate its relationship with the West and start on a new path.
“We must begin anew. I must admit simply embracing democracy is not enough. Africa must recognize its full potential and go back to the future, the days when Kwame Nkrumah, and Sekou Toure, and William Tubman, and Jomo Kenyatta preached Pan Africanism.”
Making a reference to a book written by Liberian Economist, Samuel P. Jackson, subtitled, “Rich Land; Poor Country”, which to a larger extent showcases Liberia’s despicable economic problem, Koffa noted that the Liberian story is reflective of the stories of most African countries. “We are talking about from Democratic Republic of Congo with its trillions of dollars mineral reserves to Equatorial Guinea and the Federal Republic of Nigeria with billions of dollars of oil deposits.”
The Liberian Deputy Speaker said the new Pan Africanism must vigorously implement the concept of open borders and free movement of African states–a concept that is already taking root in the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS. “We are seeing significant benefits of trade between and among peoples of different nations,” he said.
He urged the African Union to move fast to implement the open borders and free movement policies so that increased trade and access to each other’s markets can be seamlessly accomplished.
He called for the adoption of a single currency on the continent, which he said could be difficult but achievable.
“It is counterproductive to do business in a continent of at least 40 different currencies in which many of those currencies have no value and the rest are artificially pegged,” he said. “A single currency will make trade easier and our nations stronger in the global economy. If the African economy is strong, the incentive to engage in Africa will be compelling and make economic sense.”
The Deputy Speaker however used the Africa Summit to propose the creation of a universal policy and protocol that no raw material leaves any African shore, adding, “If it’s valuable enough to be extracted, it must be valuable enough to be processed and exported as a finished product.
“It must carry the label ‘Made in Africa’. It makes no sense to extract our raw materials to supply factories in China that sell finished goods to the West.”
He noted that the African economies will not grow, and the continent’s working class will not increase, the middle class will not prosper as long as Africans are hewers of wood and drawers of water.
“We must demand value-added manufacturing from the natural resources extracted from our lands. It does not make sense for fishing trawlers to mine tuna a few miles off the shores of West Africa, take them to Spain for processing and packaging, then export them to Africa as finished consumables,” he noted.
Reflecting on the UK trade relations with Africa, Koffa noted that, at the height of the British Empire, the UK held more colonies than any other nation, and as a result, more people in Africa speak English than any other foreign language.
The UK, he also added, was instrumental in building democracies in Africa. With these historical bonds, Koffa told the UK government that it cannot cede the economic space to any other power, especially the Chinese. “If you do that, the African basic mobility will be from a thatch hut to a zinc one; her social status will diminish; and we will be nations of shiny things,” he said.
“The Chinese approach to economic development in Africa is to give seemingly shiny objects in exchange for rapid depletion of our natural resources often with labor disputes.”
Deputy Speaker Koffa pointed out that the prevailing governing model in Africa today is Western democracy and teeming millions of Africans have now come to accept government for, by and of the people.
He underscored that many young and innovative African leaders have gone beyond the new norm of election and are calling for reduced terms and term limits, led by “George Weah of Liberia and Macky Sall of Senegal”.
“Even more so, the normalization of women in politics was championed by Liberia’s election of the first democratically elected female head of state in Africa and a female vice president today. Liberia joined Rwanda, Senegal and South Africa in championing the cause of women in politics both in the executive and legislative branches of government.”
Meanwhile, the African Leadership Magazine (ALM) has named Deputy Speaker Koffa as the African Outstanding Lawmaker of the Year and presented him a glass plaque in recognition of his excellence.
The ALM, also unveiled its 2023 Magazine, with Liberia’s Deputy Speaker on the cover in his honor, with a bold inscription, Legislative Excellence.
“A very distinguished lawmaker has become a beacon of hope to the seemingly voiceless sections of the (Liberian) people since he began to challenge old-age norms and traditions that are injurious to the populace. Among several other milestone achievements, he is known to be at the forefront of increasing women’s representation in Liberia,” the ALM wrote on the cover.