Intra-African trade The Director General shares his vision

The Director General of the National Social Insurance Fund (NSIF) took part as a panellist, in the 29^th Annual Meeting of Afreximbank held in Cairo (Egypt) on the 17^th of June 2022.

The meeting was an opportunity to discuss economic issues specific to Africa. Because Africans are able to solve their problems. The objective is to facilitate trade with Afreximbank.

Intra-African trade was the main theme of the presentation by the Director General of the NSIF. Noël Alain Olivier Mekulu Mvondo Akame enlightened participants from various backgrounds on the development concept itself. According to him, the notion of development should be re-examined in the light of Africa's position and ambitions. He added: "The big problem in Africa is, both in the definition of concepts and the orientations of our economies, to attempt to take up in extenso and without prior evaluation the measures implemented in other countries, even if they have sometimes been successful".

Therefore, he recommends that “we agree, especially in the long term, that the success of some does not always make the success of others, and vice versa”. He continues: "The contexts, sociology, psychology and even anthropology are not the same and the very notions of growth and others could undergo the same process of initiation with the aim of orienting our efforts to ensure the real well-being of our peoples”.

He goes on to explain that African coherence could thus be received as a cornerstone of Africa's growth, in order to achieve a balancing of production across the continent; a broad acceptance of the African plan of production/trade/free trade globally beneficial to all States. This could be viewed with advantage by African leaders and financing institutions such as Afreximbank and others working for Africa's major and critical interests.

The Top Manager of the NSIF concludes in these terms: "the construction of a network, institutional or associative, of African financing institutions, including pension funds and social security funds, for the constitution of significant and mostly self-sufficient capital, intended exclusively for the financing of African economies, according to the real needs of Africa and considering its proven potential".

It should be noted with him that recent world experiences (Covid-19, Ukrainian crisis...) teach Africa that the solutions enacted by third parties are not necessarily those that we shall have to implement because the problems are not raised in the same way or with the same relevance, and, consequently, the solutions recommended or implemented cannot be reproduced as such.

The need for autonomous and rigorous reflection is so acute for Africa that there should be no room for prejudicial intellectual comfort, consisting of unreservedly aligning oneself with the positions or strategies of third parties, or for modelling whose parameters are incomplete or poorly appreciated.

Through this brilliant presentation, the Director General of the NSIF contributed to the international influence of Cameroon and reaffirmed his vision as an avant-garde leader at the heart of social issues.