Geingob said this when he addressed the African Union leaders’ financing retreat in Rwanda Saturday.
Geingob also said if Africa wants to chart a sustainable development path that reflects priorities it should move away from relying on developing partners.
“Moreover, development assistance tends to be counter-cyclical, drying up when it is most needed. It, thus, does not augur well for sustainability. This is a reality that we have to face,” he said.
Geingob also said that most economies have graduated from least developed to the so called middle-income countries, and there is less appetite from our partners to contribute to our financing.
He urged other leaders to interrogate the use of unfair classification by the World Bank and United Nations agencies because the reality is that one cannot capture development in a single economic indicator.
“We need a dashboard of indicators. If not, I foresee a situation, where just like Namibia, many more of our countries will be denied developmental assistance simply because they have graduated to middle-income status,” he said.
Geingob welcomed the report by the AU Commission that proposes a number of funding modalities, saying Africa should first and foremost rely on domestic sources to fund our operations.
“One key source for funding that should be explored with urgency is the need to curb illicit financial outflows,” he said. “It is estimated that up to 60 percent of these illicit outflows originate from tax avoidance and evasion.”
According to Geingob, the total amount of illicit outflows is much higher than the total donor assistance to the African continent.
To curb this, he suggested that tax administration should be improved, while cooperation across borders is needed to follow and retrieve illicit outflows.
“Another key recourse to strengthen our financial position should be for our members to pay their contributions on time, and those that are in arrears to clear such arrears as soon as possible. In this regard, we commend those member states that have always kept their financial commitments to the AU, and we encourage others to do same,” he further said.
Geingob suggested that there should be streamlining of the some of the AU’s operational expenditure. Enditem
Source: Xinhua/News Ghana
