adminJOHANNESBURG. — The eighth African Economic Conference kick started yesterday in Johannesburg to address regional integration.
The conference is organized each year by the African Development Bank (AfDB), the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
Speaking to Xinhua yesterday, AfDB President Donald Kaberuka said this year’s AEC brought together top policy-makers, heads of state, leading researchers and experienced development practitioners from Africa and around the world to discuss issues arising from African countries’ efforts to pool resources and integrate their economies for the development of their regional and individual economies.
The conference will examine the efforts being made in different sectors and areas, including finance, road transport, power pools, water resource management, fiscal convergence and labor mobility, Kaberuka said.
Discussions of the three-day conference will focus on issues specific to middle-income countries and those peculiar to fragile states, he added.
“This conference will also be discussing the constraints effective integration faces, the poorly developed network of regional infrastructure, especially in transport, energy and communications, and the unsuitable array of legal, institutional and regulatory frameworks, all of which cannot be ignored,” Kaberuka said.
Delegates will look into solutions to facilitate regional integration, he added. The AEC provides a unique forum for in-depth presentations of policy-oriented research by both established academics and emerging talents from the continent. — Xinhua.
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