The Kenyan government has urged Africans to defined their destiny and steer their homegrown development agenda by using local resources rather than relying on funding from foreign countries.
Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga said the widespread notion that tangible development Africa could only be realized through funding from Western countries and the Bretton Woods Institutions was misplaced, adding that it was time the continent sought an alternative source of capital from local resources.
"We have two categories of people in this continent, those who are Afro-optimist and think that nothing is impossible to achieve and others who are Afro-pessimists who perceive to the contrary," he said on Thursday night.
Odinga cited a recent case earlier in the year in which the World Bank suspended the funding of major road projects in the country on learning that a former Finance Minister had resigned from the government to pave way for investigations.
He regretted that the continent was endowed with untapped resources but was unfortunately the poorest one and only attracted negative publicity from the international media.
Odinga told the launch of a local monthly magazine The African Mirror that the foreign press had developed a culture of painting the continent in bad light, hence to correct the anomaly.
He decried that the international press had influenced the perception of policy-makers and influence decision-making process in western nations who take advantage of any slight negative publicity to withhold assistance to the continent.
"The perception of policy makers and of the general public in those countries is rightfully reflected in their national decisions," he said.
Odinga said Africans had the ability to shape their future and challenged Kenyans to fight the ethnic fault lines that polarized the nation and forge a united front towards the development of the nation.
Source:Xinhua
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