Fulfil your promises to citizens – Mahama charges African leaders

• Posted on April 29, 2014April 29, 2014
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

President John Mahama has charged African leaders to make good their promises to better the lives of citizens.

Opening the pan African conference on inequalities in Accra, the president highlighted the need to focus on the significance of equality in drafting a post 2015 developmental agenda for Africa.

That agenda, he said, must include African indigenous values and systems.

“For far too long on the African continent only a minority of people benefited from the resources of our nations.

“For far too long our people have been placated with promises of a better future. It is time to make good on those promises.

“If Africa’s fortunes are indeed changing then that prosperity must be reflected in all of its citizens not just the wealthy and the privileged,” the president said.

The three day conference organized by the government of Ghana is meant to discuss current socio-economic trends in African which is said to have left a significant number of the population behind; and to chart an all inclusive path towards what authorities term an African agenda 2063.

Chairman of the National Planning and Development Committee, Paul Victor Obeng, said leaders and all other stakeholders owe it a duty to better the lives of people they govern.

Speakers at the conference all took turns to criticise what they say is the complete waste of African talents some of whom have their dreams dashed due to lack of opportunities in many parts of Africa.

They called for new inclusive and people centered modules as stakeholders in Africa in order to explore common paths to development after 2015.

Chairperson of the conference, Professor Henrietta Mensa-Bonsu said the ideas must be backed with actions.

She added, special attention must be given the vulnerable in society.

Professor Mensa-Bonsu said while development partners are crucial, Africans should do what is required of them and be prepared to live in a changed world.

The Millennium Development Goals expire in 2015, hence the urgent need for a global discussion on a post 2015 developmental framework.

The Pan African Conference organized here in Ghana is to provide an agenda which is relevant and achievable within the African context as part of the global discussion.

The continent is currently said to be the second most unequal continent in the world

Author: Gifty Andoh-Appiah