The United Kingdom, UK Department for International Development, DFID, and the African Health Empowerment and Advancement Foundation, AHEAF, have advised that a collaboration between the public and private sectors will stimulate the Nigerian economy and help it out of the current economic recession.
AHEAF Executive Director, Mrs Sholape Iyoho, stated that the use of public-private partnership, PPP, especially at a time the government is dealing with challenges of fiscal space, to execute various development projects could “provide additional/alternative funding sources to address this gap”.
Iyoho spoke in Ado Ekiti during the two-day Second Regional Conference on “The Role of Private Sector in Building Social and Economic Resilience in South West” organised by DFID in partnership with AHEAF.
“Government partnering with the private sector can enable continued or improved quality of service(s) with little or no cost to the government thereby creating fiscal space for financing other spending priorities,” she said.
The AHEAF boss said the workshop was targeted at building and developing clear and precise collaboration framework to address both social development contributions and intervention support during emergencies along the line of the foundation’s vision to see Africa develop to its full potential.
Ekiti State Governor, represented by the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, Pastor Olusesan Alabi, who declared open the conference, charged the public sector to contribute its quota to the development of the nation and state.
DFID Regional Programme Officer, Margaret Fagboyo, said the role of private sector was beyond Corporate Social Responsibility, describing the private sector as “partner to government and civil societies in national and state development”.
Fagboyo, who said inclusive governance is inconclusive without the private sector, said “government cannot provide everything and indeed there is a lot of input in terms of development finance, development policy, infrastructure development and human development that the private sector can contribute to”.
Participants at the conference drawn from South West states of Ekiti, Ondo, Oyo, Lagos, Osun and Ogun, charted ways the private sector could collaborate with the public sector in various sectors of the economy to bring about accelerated development.
Consultant and Corporate Responsbilty Officer of Mothergold, Dr Adesina Fagbenro-Byron, who said the private sector have traditionally partnered with government to promote development, added that the role of the private sector “is pivotal and fundamental in achieving success of the developmental aspirations of any society,” not solely centred on financing and investment.
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