{"id":10390,"date":"2014-04-02T09:31:01","date_gmt":"2014-04-02T09:31:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=10390"},"modified":"2014-04-02T09:31:01","modified_gmt":"2014-04-02T09:31:01","slug":"unequal-resource-distribution-cause-of-africas-conflicts-mahama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2014\/04\/unequal-resource-distribution-cause-of-africas-conflicts-mahama\/","title":{"rendered":"Unequal resource distribution cause of Africa\u2019s conflicts – Mahama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"13558756104_0ab5d996b3_b\"<\/a>President Mahama has attributed the major conflicts in Africa to the inequality in the distribution of national resources.<\/p>\n

According to the President, people take up arms against their respective states when they don\u2019t see any future in the state.<\/p>\n

He further stated that as various economies begin to accelerate, the wide gap between the richest segment of the population and the poorest segment becomes more evident.<\/p>\n

Speaking at a meeting to discuss an Africa Development Bank\u00a0commissioned report on fragile African States in Brussels, Belgium where he is attending this year\u2019s EU-Africa summit, President Mahama urged the governments of various countries to carry their people along in the development process.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s one critical issue that has become topical in the world and that is the issue of inequality. As the economy grows, are you taking all people along on that journey of growth or are some people being left behind and that becomes a critical question?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Below is the\u00a0transcript of President Mahama’s contribution to a high level meeting to discuss an AfDB\u00a0commissioned report on Fragile African States in Brussels, Belgium.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/strong>There is one critical issue that has become topical in the world and that is inequality. As the economy grows, some people are being left behind and that becomes a critical question. People take up arms against the state because they don’t see any future in the state. And so, how do we lessen the inequality between our people?<\/p>\n

Especially as the economy starts to accelerate, you begin to see a wide gap between the richest segment of your population and the poorest segment. When you get the additional resource as the oil and gas, you are likely to see billionaires and you are likely to see people who really are in the boondocks. What interventions do we put to ensure that we have a propper social safety net to protect the poor and vulnerable?<\/p>\n

One of the very important instruments that have worked for Ghana is a fund that we call the District Assemblies Common Fund. It is in written into our Constitution that between 5 and 8% of Gross National Revenue must be transferred directly to the District Assemblies. We have 216 districts and every year the districts receive between 5 to 8%. The current is 7.5%.<\/p>\n

The districts receive 7.5% of the Gross Tax Revenue and they decide how they want to use that money. They have an assembly that draws a budget, at the beginning of the year they know what they are expecting and so they can use the money on healthcare, on sanitation or for the provision of water. We see across the country 216 districts that have the basic infrastructure of a police station, of a district hospital, of schools, of a local government offers, of extension of electricity and many other things that make life worth living. So I think that addressing inequality bydecentralization and empowering the people fiscally to take their destiny into their own hands is a very important issue that we must build into strengthening our states.<\/p>\n

Then there is support to democratic institutions. Often, after conflict, we are still building our democratic institutions. And so direct support for capacity building, for parliaments, for the judiciary, for anticorruption agencies, for civil society organizations is also very important. And we’ve enjoyed a lot of support from the European Union and several other institutions in terms of strengthening democracy.<\/p>\n

Youth employment is another area that we need to watch. Africa’s population is the fastest growing and the youth are being chained out of school like on a conveyor belt. So how are you going to keep them engaged – in the English proverb they say”the devil finds work for idle hands” -, how do you engage the youth so they don’t get engaged by the devil in social deviance and other such areas?<\/p>\n

Coming right out of the ECOWAS meeting, for us the new horizing that we must push and push firmly is to integrate our economies. I believe that we have a better chance of growing comparatively in all our countries if we have a more integrated market in West Africa, where we are able to move goods and people easily across our countries, than if all of us make the same isolated effort in our individual countries.<\/p>\n

Pushing the integration project forward in Africa is important and, in that regard, there is a need of infrastructure. How do we put in the road infrastructure, how do we expand the ports to create more economic activity, how do we share energy, for countries that have a comparative advantage to produce more energy share with countries that don’t have – these are all things that we need to look at, and collectively we can strengthen the structures that support our countries if we work together than if we work individually.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By: Marian Efe Ansah\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Mahama has attributed the major conflicts in Africa to the inequality in the distribution of national resources. According to the President, people take up arms against their respective states when they don\u2019t see any future in the state. He further stated that as various economies begin to accelerate, the wide gap between the richest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":10430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[43,38,17],"yoast_head":"\nUnequal resource distribution cause of Africa\u2019s conflicts - Mahama - Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. 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