PRESIDENT Dr Arif Alvi on Wednesday stressed the need
for greater collaboration between Pakistan and the African nations to address the common challenges of poverty and illiteracy, besides their cooperation in trade and security. Addressing the inaugural session of the two-day ‘Engage Africa Conference’ in Islamabad, he linked poverty elimination to peace, and called on the governments to adopt a people-centric approach in security-related strategy.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs has done well by organizing a conference of the country’s envoys in the African Continent with a view to deliberating on issues relating to enhanced cooperation with them. The move is timely in the sense other countries of the world especially the United States and China are focusing more on Africa as its economies are considered as ‘lions on the move’. African continent is a rising market of 1.26 billion people, it is rich in mineral resources and is an exporter of energy resources. Pakistan has a lot of goodwill in the region as the country always championed the cause of the African countries at UN and remained in the forefront of peacekeeping missions in Africa. In this backdrop, it is unfortunate that Pak-Africa trade is negligible and the country has diplomatic presence in a few countries alone – thirteen missions to cover 54 countries (the rest are managed through concurrent accreditation). Apart from Africa being a huge potential market for Pakistani goods, the country’s geo-strategic location and connectivity offers opportunity for African goods to reach Central Asia and South Asia. Increase in bilateral trade will open new opportunities for both regions which will help them in diversifying their trade basket and also in reducing the price that will ultimately benefit the consumer. Pakistan can encourage investment in agro-based industry and meat processing units in Africa besides exploring more avenues for cooperation in close coordination with China. There are also prospects for closer defence cooperation with many countries of the region and Pakistan can help meet their defence procurement needs.
