Africa’s industrialization sector gets boost
The African Development Bank (AfDB) and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to step up collaboration to boost Africa’s industrialization this week.
Akinumi Adesina, President of AfDB said the Bank already benefits enormously from UNIDO’s expertise in developing policies, programmes and knowledge tools which support their member countries to industrialise.
“The signing of the present MoU is key to our Strategy’s implementation and in 2017, the Bank allocated US$1.2 billion to Industrialize Africa, one of the Bank’s High 5 development priorities, mostly to projects for financial sector operations,” he added.
Philippe Scholte, Managing Director at UNIDO said achieving Africa’s industrial potential will not happen by chance, strong partnerships such as the our two organizations have not formalized are key.
“This partnership will create significant opportunities and facilitate our work together towards the operationalization of The Third Industrial Development Decade for Africa (IDDA III),”he emphasized.
The two entities have already initiated working level collaboration including within the framework of UNIDO’s flagship Programme for Country Partnership (PCP) model, which helps synchronize development efforts and mobilize resources to support countries in accelerating industrialization.
The MoU was signed by Adesina and Scholtes on the sidelines of the Annual Meetings of the Boards of Governors of the African Development Bank Group, held under the theme of ‘Accelerating Africa’s industrialization’which was attended by African Industry Ministers, representative of regional Member States, development partners and private-sector executive in Busan, Republic of Korea.
