AFP, Dakar :
Africa needs to first rely on internal investment if it is to achieve the infrastructure developments it urgently needs, the president of Senegal said Sunday at a regional summit.
“We rely on our own efforts (to mobilise) domestic resources, because of the shift in public development aid and the volatility of capital markets,” President Macky Sall said at the Dakar Financing Summit.
The two day meeting of NEPAD-the New Partnership for Africa’s Development-brought together the leaders of Mali, Nigeria, and Benin, with 300 delegates from across the continent.
Closing the event on Sunday, Sall called for greater integration of the economies and infrastructures of African countries, and a “paradigm shift” in the way the resources of the continent are used.
He also said that while Africa has “certain urgent needs”, it should be seen “not as a receptacle for aid but as a place of opportunity, investment, and partnership”.
