EDITOR’S NOTE: It is not new for Meles to bite the hands that feed him. We have seen what he did to Eritreans after they helped him come to power. Without the money he is currently getting from the World Bank, this tin-pot dictator cannot survive one week. But it is good to see that he is attacking the World Bank — an organization that is a major source of Africa’s misery.
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Ethiopia’s tribal dictator Meles Zenawi on Tuesday denounced economic policies imposed on African countries in the 1980s by the World Bank and charged that they rather delayed the continent’s development.
“Economic liberalization policies were a failure and delayed Africa’s development. These choices neglected investments in infrastructure, education and training,” he said in the Japanese city of Yokohama during an international symposium on Africa’s development organized by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
Zenawi urged African countries to conduct “more pragmatic policies” to accelerate their economic growth by investing in infrastructure to ensure their sustainable development.
“There is no sustainable economic growth without reliable and performing infrastructure. Over the past few years, African countries have been achieving economic growth, but the inadequacy of infrastructure is likely to ruin their efforts,” the Ethiopian Prime Minister said.
“Our partners are exerting pressure on us, but they do not leave us room for man oeuvre to enable us to design and work for our own development.”
Zenawi hailed Japan’s support to Africa, urging the continent to build on its economic model.
“In Ethiopia, we built on Asia’s economic experience in general,” he said before a large audience made up of African and Asian delegates who are in Japan to attend the Fourth Tokyo International Conference on Africa’s Development.
The views of the Ethiopian dictator are shared by the other organizers of the symposium, namely the former president of Mozambique, Joaquim Chissano, the president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Ronald Kaberuka, the head of state of Tanzania and current chairman of the African Union (AU), Kikwete Jakaya Mrisho, and JICA Director, Mrs Sadako Ogata.
Mrs Ogata deplored the lack of investment in the field of infrastructure, saying JICA had not sufficiently taken into account the importance of infrastructure in development policies.
The four organizers of the symposium stressed the importance of the private sect or, as it must play a major role in economic development in Africa.
“Economic growth should not be reduced to mere figures. It must be felt by the population,” the former Mozambican president added.
The President of the AfDB, Kaberuka, said African countries must clearly define their economic policy and work by order of priority.
“There is need to reform the bureaucracy to modernize it and make it more competent,” he said.
“We cannot do everything at the same time. We must move in stages,” Kaberuka said, advocating a reform of the bureaucracy to modernize it in a bid to make it mo r e competent.
Source: Pana