Former Minister of Education and Co-founder, Bring Back Our Girls Movement, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili has said that African continent stands a chance of increasing its Grand Domestic Product ( GDP) to $360 billion by 2025, through intentional inclusion of women in development process.
Ezekwesili who spoke virtually in Abuja over the weekend at the ” Big Ideas Platform ” organised by School of Politics, Policy and Governance, stated that gender disparity was one of the challenges, African continent must deliberately address in order to catch up with global development trend.
The former Minister, was one of several speakers who shared ideas on the theme, “Reawakening the African Renaissance: Pathways to inclusive growth and development.”
She noted that, “Africa can actually increase its GDP by over $360 billion by 2025 . Just improve to the extent of neighbours next to you as a country, in how you include your women in the development process, and Africa stands a chance of such increase in its GDP”.
While she opined that Africa’s development potential has been largely held up by gender disparity, she also advocated that enabling environment should be created for the young people to deploy their skills and talents in contributing to economic growth.
She said, “Africans young people are already showing that they can act globally, despite some of the challenges that hold them back from poor governance.
“If they find enabling environment, they can even surpass the production that others put on the table. So African young people have proven to be game changers economically”.
Also, she said that African continent has been backward in technology, and need to brace up with utmost commitment to technological developments.
“Technology has been Africa’s most insignificant revolution, we did not participate in the agrarian revolution, we were not part of industrial revolution, we were not really part of the early days of knowledge revolution, but the ICT revolution has been our first participation, but not as major producers of ideas of it,” she added.
