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The New Partnership for Africa’s Development will be successful only if it is owned by the African peoples united in their diversity.  [NEPAD]

GOODWILL MESSAGE, Romeo Barberopoulos

ECOBANK/MANEG REGIONAL TRADE FORUM

AUGUST 4, 2005, ABUJA NIGERIA.

In Abuja, May 14 2005, the Economic Commission for Africa's Conference of Finance, Planning and Economic Development Ministers kicked off.

Over thirty ministers and central bank governors attended the two-day meeting.

In his welcoming address, Economic Commission for Africa Executive Secretary K.Y. Amoako asked ministers to "put all the pieces together" and agree on the urgent actions needed to erode poverty on the continent.

"This meeting can make a crucial contribution to the formulation of a consensus on what Africa needs to do to achieve the MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS and also highlight the ways in which the international community can assist us," he said.

Africa is lagging far behind in global efforts to meet the Millennium Development Growth’s by 2015. Although most of the world's regions have made at least some progress towards meeting some or all of the goals, sub-Saharan Africa has seen poverty rise and life expectancy decline in the five years since the Goals were declared in 2000.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Africans of today look back with anger and frustration for the precarious situation they find themselves today.

Africa is the second largest and one of the most wealthy, in natural resources, continent on earth and we wonder how and why poor countries in natural resources, like Switzerland, have the wealthiest per capita citizenry, and Botswana have ten times higher GDP than that of Nigeria.

Almost five years have passed since the largest gathering ever of heads of State and government from all over the world made this solemn promise to the peoples of the world: “we will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty.”

Almost ten years have passed since the leaders of the world solemnly committed themselves in Copenhagen “to the goal of eradicating poverty in the world, through decisive national actions and international cooperation, as an ethical, social, political and economic imperative

of humankind.”; and yet poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa is rising

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The enemy is within us all individuals who are passive, who believe that God alone will solve our problems, who say that the governments that we allow them to rule us are responsible for our predicament, who spent our money as a tool to satisfy our ego.

You may call it corruption, indifference, or whatever.

The fact remains that using the $540 billion said to have been stolen from the national treasury in Nigeria, through corruption, the entire Africa could have looked better by far today, if, and only if, these funds were duly applied. 

In 1885, the Berlin West Africa Conference started, divided West and Central Africa and this is how West and Central African countries of today were created. 

Long after those countries gained independence, their economic dichotomy and dependence to the colonial masters continued, to the extend that till about two decades ago in you needed to telephone from Nigeria to the republic of Benin or Togo you had to go though one of the major European countries.

Today most African countries are economically united to two main groups, the Francophone and the Anglophone or Commonwealth, of which I am yet to see how common this Commonwealth wealth has been for Africa.

This I call a severe Economic Dichotomy in today’s Africa that keep her economically  undeveloped with the known tragic repercussions and this is what we are called upon to address with seriousness and commitment today, in this forum

I do not believe that African countries are artificially created, although this may appear to be so.

We must not forget that there is a unique affinity in relationship among Africans that is not any different than that of the Scotts, the Wales, the Irish and the Britons that were forcefully  united into a country called the United Kingdom, after bloody wars.

The Germans, made of heterogenous groups, became a Confederation [1871] and the same applied to the Swiss who are a Confederation speaking four different languages

.

In short, going through the turbulent European history one sees clearly that European counties have never been homogeneous nations in terms of tribal terminology.

The fact is that all the African peoples are indigenous and the differences

[ African economies are strange economies; strange and often inexplicable in terms of rational thinking, thus defeating rational economic reasoning.

Basically, those that eventually benefit from the Economic Partnership Agreements appear to be those that instigate and pioneer them. As a result we have the case of Benin Republic that imports much more than it can ever consume, and Nigeria’s informal exports are twelve times more than its formal non-oil exports ]

Today’s African Regional Economic Communities (RECs) include the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the East African Community (EAC), the Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC), the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), and the West African Economic and Monetary (UEMOA).

The solution to Sub Regional problems are to consolidate these strategic, economic and political potentials among all African countries in a progressive partnership aiming at uplifting the living standard of the peoples of the continent. To achieve this we shall all need to engage ourselves in a strong commitment to develop and sustain the relations among the business communities in all African countries

To achieve these objectives we must strongly remember Khalil Gibran great sayings, from his book The Garden of the Prophet:

==Pity the nation that thank God for having survived the day forgetting those who are dying to-day.

==Pity the nation that has no moral back bone, strong enough to bring out of its misery.

==Pity the nation that is full of grudges and empty of action.

==Pity the nation that praises the corrupt as industrious and that acclaims the bully as a conqueror.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Let the good will message of today’s Forum be:

Strong commitment by all for a Private Public Sector Partnership with one and only mission,

Sustainable development aiming at uplifting the living standard of the peoples of Africa.

If we are ready to achieve, this let the ECOWAS Secretariat become a hub for quarterly annual meetings that will host representatives from both the Private and Republic Sectors of all the ECOWAS nations to discuss ways and means to fight the scourge of poverty.

As we gather today, 950 million Africans look at us with hope for the immediate future and betraying them will be a curse cast upon us and our children.

ROMEO BARBEROPOULOS MFR

ABUJA, AUGUST 4, 2005.