World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, has decried the stunted growth in technology in Africa.
He stated that many African countries were not investing in the sector, warning that the situation would have adverse effects in African future.
Kim spoke on Thursday while addressing the press during the World Bank Group/International Monetary Fund 2018 Spring Meetings.
DAILY POST is attending the meetings.
Answering a question on what African leaders must urgently work on to effectively compete on the global scale, Jim identified three areas – investment in technology, education and human capital.
He said: “We’re extremely concerned that many Africa countries are not compared to compete in what is increasingly becoming a digitalized economy. We also see lots of evidence that suggests that many of the low skill jobs will be taken over by technology.
“Now, there’s also tremendous hope for technology. I think there’s tremendous hope that technology could help some African countries, many African countries we hope leapfrog and go forward and find new ways of driving economic growth.
“But that there’s no getting away from the need to invest much more and much more effectively in health and education. When we say rates of childhood stunting over 30 percent, meaning these children their brains are simply not as well-developed as their non-stunted peers, and that they were learn less and they will earn less in the future.
“We have good date on that. That when stunting rates are over 30 percent, sometimes close to 50 percent that that group of young — of children will not be prepared to compete in the digital economy in the future. So human capital is a huge, huge issue.
“And I think, you know, if you look at all of the difficulties in terms of, you know, of increasing their resources for hard infrastructure, things like roads and energy, and also the need to increase investments in human capital. Every African country has to look much more seriously at how it improves its own domestic resource mobilization.
“So in other words, they should be better at collecting taxes, you know, to just provide the basic services we think countries should collect at least 15 percent of GDP in taxes. Many countries don’t reach that level.
“Also, if African countries were to remove fossil fuel subsidies that are often very regressive, in other words, they help the rich more than they help the poor. Even agriculture subsidies, there are many agricultural subsidies that are also very regressive.
“They don’t help the small holder farmers, but they help others in the value chain. And things like tobacco taxes. Tobacco taxes have been shown to be very effective at raising revenue and decreasing smoking and can be used to finance all kinds of things.
“So there’s so many things that can be done to help countries both invest in physical infrastructure and also invest in human capital, but it requires reform and it requires courage.
“And so I know these kinds of things that I’m talking about are difficult, but please let all the African leaders know that the World Bank Group’s ready to help them undertake all those measures.”
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