UK-based think tank advocates state of emergency in Africa

Accra, Sept. 27, GNA - The Council for Afrika International, a UK-based think tank has called on the United Nations General Assembly, to declare a state of emergency in Africa to address the prolonged and bloody conflicts that has hit the continent.

The council has suggested the need for a Marshal Plan to end the reign of terror of tried, tested and failed underdevelopment strategies that still result in $1.06 trillion annual financial capital flight, out of a richly endowed but acutely exploited and pauperised continent". A release signed by Dr Koku Adomdza, President of the organisation and addressed to the world body, said by the time the 65th Session of the UN General Assembly is finished, thousands more Africans would have perished due to preventable causes.

"Three years after the bicentenary anniversary of the abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 2007, 65 years since the establishment of the United Nations and at the end of the first decade of the 21st Century, the majority of Africans, Diaspora Africans and the African Continent continue to languish and eclipsed in poverty."

It attributed the problem to marginalisation by the "unethical global economic disorder, including cruel short-changing for raw materials, monopoly of scientific and technological know-how, monopolised concentration and ownership of financial capital in the Global North as well as the "shameless profiteering from the big business of poverty and economic underdevelopment, for which countless Africans have for centuries paid and continue to pay the ultimate price, yet without a light at the end of the tunnel".

"We (Council) hold that this is an indictment of global leadership, the same way as a board of a corporate entity would be held responsible and accountable for industrial hazards that end up in loss of life," the release said.

"What Africa requires is a radical Marshal Plan to transform the continent from a dumping ground for the Global North manufactured products and services, into a highly industrialised and competitive continental economy. "Africa is blessed with natural resources, skilled and unskilled labour, and colossal colonial economic and karmic debt consequent to centuries of Global North exploitation, adequate to fund the industrialisation of the continent. All it requires is the courage and the fearlessness of global leadership to come clean with crimes committed against Africa and its people, and begin to pay back debts owed to Africa."