Enhanced manufacturing industry guarantee for intra-trade in Africa- SEATINI

Thu, 06 Apr 2017 10:14:48 +0000

BY MAILESI BANDA

THE manufacturing industry in Africa needs to be enhanced if the continent is to trade within itself, Southern Eastern African Trade Information Negotiations Institute (SEATINI) chief executive director, Nathan Irumba has said.

The executive director said the African continent would grow and sustain its economy if so much effort was put in supporting the manufacturing industry.

He appealed to African governments to implement policies that would favour the growth of the manufacturing sector.

Speaking in an interview with the Daily Nation, he said the manufacturing industry was the backbone of economic growth for the African continent.

Mr. Irumba lamented that Africa lost substantial amounts of money in the process of exporting raw material to other continents while the products were imported into the country as finished products at a high cost.

“Most of the products in Africa leave the continent as raw materials and are later imported into Africa at a high cost and so we end up paying a high price for things that we could add value to and grow the economies of the countries they are produced from,” he said.

He said there was need for capacity building and deliberate polices to ensure that value addition was embraced on the continent.

He said Africa remained the biggest supplier of raw material in the world, adding that it was unfortunate that the continent still had poor countries.

He stated that there was potential for economic growth on the African continent unlike any other continent, adding that if value addition was improved, the countries in the region could trade better.

He said inter-country trade would help enhance the growth of the manufacturing sector which was paramount in the growth of the economy.

“We have been exporting cotton to other continents and still import the clothes that are a product of the cotton, why don’t we enhance our capacity and produce linen from the cotton and export it as a finished products?” he asked.

He said Africa needed to unite if it was to attain visible economic growth.