Africa needs to prepare its youth for the workplace of tomorrow and this was the message delivered by Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa at the closing of the World Economic Forum on Friday.
Ramaphosa said the intellectual capabilities of the youth must be developed to allow the younger generation to exploit their own resources and the opportunities of a technologically advanced world. He has called for a rehaul of the continent’s approach to education.
“The work that is being done to promote science and innovation in Africa through initiatives such as the coalition for research and innovation and which is being championed by the WEF is contributing to this effort by building networks of knowledge across the continent by pulling resources and by developing shared research capacity across different African countries we are creating a new scientific ecosystem.”
Ramaphosa said Africa would only achieve economic growth by developing its youth. He emphasised the need to work more closely to ensure millions of people get access to economic opportunities.
“To achieve progress in these areas bold and responsible leadership is required on this continent, Government need to give leadership, so does private sector and labour as well. We need a leadership that will put the interest of citizens first. We need a leadership that builds socio-partnerships for collective action for removing the barriers of economic inclusion.”
Earlier, addressing journalists at the close of the Forum, Deputy President says Africa needs selfless and accountable leaders who will help develop the continent.
During the session, Ramaphosa was flooded with questions regarding the ANC’s leadership race ahead of the party’s December elective conference. Ramaphosa says the ANC leadership will be determined by party branches.
Meanwhile former Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan says while government has room to experiment with some policy choices, sound judgment should be applied.
Gordhan says he was invited to attend the summit and he’s interested in the issues discussed at this forum. “I was invited in the first instance.”
Experts say the signing of the FICA into law by President Jacob Zuma will assist the country to continue to be part of the global financial system.
They believe that failure to do so would have been seen by ratings agencies as further evidence of government’s lack of governance.
They also maintain that it would have seen the country’s local currency debt lowered to junk status by ratings agencies, leading to the collapse of the rand.
Dr Azar Jammine says it was critical that the bill be signed into law. He maintains that failure to do so would have affected the country negatively.
“Our local currency debt has not been downgraded to junk yet by S and P or by Moody’s, but not signing FICA into law would have jeopardised our ability to hold those investment grade ratings on our local currency debt, and that being the case if we were downgraded on our local currency debt, you could see South Africa having to fall out of international bond indices and the result of that would be a huge outflow of funds which would then see the rand collapsing.”
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