Standard Bank Chairman Nonkululeko Nyembezi criticized African governments for not doing the basics at this year’s World Economic Forum.
- Standard Bank Chairman Nonkululeko Nyembezi criticized African governments for not doing the basics at this year’s World Economic Forum.
- She says that if they had done their job of governing better, Africa would be much further ahead than it is.
- Nyembezi believes the time has come for the private sector to lead growth on the continent.
- For more financial news, go to News24 Business Cover.
Standard Bank chairman says African governments should get out of the way and allow the private sector to “lead” their economies.
Nonkululeko Nyembezi, former JSE board chair, told the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland that many of these governments have reached the “absolute limit” of their ability to fix their countries and grow their economies. .
She said it was time for a path of economic growth led by the private sector.
“I honestly can’t see how we can accelerate African growth without it. It’s one thing to think about crowding in the private sector, but that’s not really what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the private sector leading this time.” . she said.
Nyembezi said the time for useless ideologies and the “20th century concept” that government cannot trust the private sector is long overdue. She said that government and corporate executives meet annually at conferences like the WEF, talk about reviving African economies, and then go home and do nothing about it.
Even when it comes to leading and financing development projects, where many believed only the government could push them forward, that “experiment has not yielded any hope or benefit.”
“Maybe what I’m saying is get the government out of the way,” he added.
The African Continental Free Trade Area is a case in point.
Nyembezi gave an example with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement. She said that she was very supportive of him and that many companies felt the same way. She admitted that in real life it was hard to make these trade deals happen, but it might have been better if there had been more private sector involvement.
“We’re not making a lot of progress. And it’s in my mind because there was this divergence between the public sector that came into the room to negotiate things and then said, here it is, that’s it, folks. Now there’s a struggle to try to see how do we make this work,” Nyembezi said.
He said if African governments had gotten into this together with the private sector from the start, it might have been a different story,” he said.
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Responding to Nyembezi, the Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya, Patrick Njoroge, said that if the public sector set the rules and complied with them, it would make a difference. But he has a problem with the concept of governments negotiating with the private sector on how to move forward.
“There is a private sector, a portion [of it] – that he loves to receive concessions, etc. they all come [with promises of] more jobs etc. I think we all have a lot of warnings like that,” she said.
The governor said his assessment of the AfCFTA was less dire than that of Nyembezi or other private sector players.
“It’s true that, on the surface, we haven’t seen a lot of trading. But a lot of work has been done, in a sense, paving the way,” he added.
But Nyembezi said there is still a need to rethink how governments work with the private sector. Also, African governments need to start doing the basics.
“We need a better quality of government across the continent. If governments did just one thing, govern better, we would probably take two or three steps forward,” he said.
His other wish, he added, is that corruption be talked about less and that more action be taken against it.
