Ifeoluwa Oyedele, Executive Director (Networks) of Niger Delta Power Holding Company— (NDPHC), has challenged African countries to devise indigenous answers to their current socioeconomic and political difficulties.
Foreign ideas and techniques, he added, have failed to tackle the concerns because they did not address the issues at the grassroots level.
Oyedele provided the advice Monday during a keynote speech at the
Sir Dawda Kairaba is hosting the 2022 International Voice Achievers Award.
Jawara International Conference Centre is located in Banjul, Gambia.
Speaking on the award’s subject, “Building a Developed, Valued, and Respected Africa Now: A Clarion Call for Action,”
a Collective African Participation for an African-Led Solution,” Oyedele remarked that the only option for African nations to overcome the obstacles they have faced after independence is to develop domesticated tactics and answers to the problems.
“The point here is that Africa has the capacity to overcome its social, political, and economic problems, and beyond the capacity to improve upon their mediocrity, African countries can also achieve the seemingly elusive development with the right strategies that take into account the peculiar nature of the continent and its diverse population,” he said.
“In order to assume her proper place in the community of nations and win the respect of others, Africa needs a home-grown solution to the myriad challenges that have afflicted many regions of the continent since independence.”
Oyedele praised the organizers, saying, “One of the key goals of bringing the conference to Banjul this year is to shine a light on The Gambia in order to harness its enormous potential and that of the whole African continent.”
“The organizers are interested in commemorating African shared history and investigating strategies to improve Africa’s good, which has been a key theme focus of social science studies and the idea of development since World War II’s conclusion.”
According to the engineer, “society does not grow on a mere accumulation of money, as the condition of African economies has proved; rather, it must be employed as a tool coupled with modern technology to increase the populace’s standard of life.”
He noted that “Sub-Saharan African countries have found it difficult to fix the anomalies built into the global economic structure handed down to them at independence, and the difficulty is similar to what one encounters in an attempt to build an impressive super-structure on a crooked foundation.”
Oyedele, on the other hand, emphasized that until the masses are re-oriented and actively involved in nation building, as well as adopting patriotism, population control, transparency, and a severe reduction in institutional and systemic corruption, long-term progress will be unachievable.
