Business
NEPAD Plans Summit To Address Poverty In Africa
The African Union–NEPAD meeting, scheduled to hold in Nigeria in the first quarter of 2011, will focus on efforts to reduce poverty on the continent, an official said.
Dr Robert Aniebo, Executive Secretary, NEPAD Business Group Nigeria, told newsmen in Abuja on Sunday that plans were on to ensure that the meeting was a success.
“The meeting is also expected to convene several development roundtables on contemporary development issues on the nine thematic development clusters of NEPAD.
He also said that the meeting would witness the first “Nobel Laureates High Level Meeting with Eminent Persons Group and NEPAD Founding Fathers’’.
Aniebo said the conference was still at the planning stage with the group still consulting various institutions expected to be involved in the execution.
He said the summit would discuss issues on debt management in Africa, among others, as NEPAD was concerned about the growing rate of debts in Africa without reference to their uses.
“We are concerned and we want to be sure that as a people, we are contracting debts that we know the implications and how they accumulate overnight.’’
He said NEPAD would work in collaboration with the Debt Management Office in Nigeria and Central Bank of Nigeria on the issue to educate member countries at the summit.
“We are also working on the International donor conference for the Niger Delta and that will take place during the conference.
“We are also going to exemplify entrepreneurship in Africa and we are going to work with ECOWAS on this,’’ Aniebo said.
He added that issues on the Gulf of Guinea would be discussed at the summit as it was critical for Africa ’s growth.
“These are the areas that we will cover during the NEPAD week and we want to make sure it is purely international and we will bring all the global partners to this conference,’’ Aniebo said
He added that plans were on to contact some Nobel Laureates in Africa to feature at the summit.