Ambassador Wanle Akinboboye is the chief Convener and founder of Continent Building Initiative, CBI a pan African group established to transform African from its current position to a new level where everything thrives. He spoke with Remi Oladoye on the Vision of CBI and strategy put in place to work with AU-ECOSOC , ITP and others to achieve Agenda 2063.
At the just concluded conference on Agenda 2063, an agreement was signed between Continent Building Initiative CBI, Institute of Tourism Professions and AU-ECOSOC, can you just let us into what the agreement is all about and what do u intend to achieve with that
Well its very simple, it’s for us to work together ,to use practical application towards continent building, there has been a lot of talk, a lot of symposium over the years but we are bringing together now professionals, active people in commerce, tourism, business, trade, Culture to come and join hands with African Union AU-ECOSOC agenda 2063, the Africa we want , The Africa we have was created for us by colonial masters and it require a concerted effort to create the Africa we want for future generations, for generations yet unborn, they need to come and feel the essence of a development that is weaved around our culture, weaved around the Africa that we want
Is it about culture and economic prosperity alone?
Economic, culture trade and of course re-orientation, it took a concerted effort for them to remove from us every essence of the sense of the culture of our pride , it required a concerted effort on our part to get it back so Agenda 2063 Is for us to begin to lay foundations, four hundred years of abuse cannot be wash away overnight, it require a plan, a concerted plan and we are using Africa Union ECOSOC, Nigerian charter to replicate it throughout the continent of Africa in a manner that will create a solid platform for tomorrow people , the lack of platform today we suffered from is based on the actions and inactions of yesterday, a platform for tomorrow’s people is in our hand.
One of the major challenges militating against implementation of policies in Africa is poor leadership what are the strategies put in place to ensure the leaders are effectively involved in this project
I think with this narrative we are changing the focus , when you talked about leadership I think you are referring to people in government, you are probably referring to people that hold political power, we are not looking in that direction, we are looking in the direction of individual leaders, we are looking at the direction of leaders that are doing things on their own, 22 year old leaders somewhere in Ekiti, 50 year old leader in Mozambique , that have nothing to do with government are those we are going to connect with, the essence of this is to harvest and harness the best brains of the continent of Africa, those in the continent and those outside the continent we are going to select, to stop the brain drain so leadership for us should not be weaved around only those in power there is so much they can do, before we start asking them questions about what they can do let us start what we can do and our focus is going to be on pushing individual leader in their respective fields to be part of the growth of the continent of Africa, we are not going to waste to much energy over authority because usually it is very difficult to bend authority but it is easier to work with leaders hat are not in authority, that are willing to even before you come to them, they are willing to add value because it’s our collective efforts that can transform the continent
But we cannot talked about this implementing developmental policies without political will
We are going to focus on 80 percent of what we can do so that 20 percent on engaging government we are not saying we are not going to talk to the government, there are so many people that are proactive and agile, intelligent people in government, so many brilliant people that can add value we will connect them it’s a collective effort, public private.
