LUSAKA, July 18 (Xinhua) -- The 20th Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Summit opened here Wednesday with a call by President Edgar Lungu on African nations to take the industrialization agenda seriously.
Speaking at the start of the summit in Lusaka, the Zambian capital, the Zambian leader said Africa cannot continue to be an exporter of raw materials and an importer of finished products.
He said the continent needed to take the issue of industrialization and value addition to products seriously in order to get meaningful benefits from its raw materials.
"We cannot continue to trade in raw commodities among ourselves, while relying on markets outside the African continent to supply us with finished products from our very own resources obtained from our region," he said.
According to him, Africa should create a conducive environment which will enable the private sector to generate the necessary financing to invest in value addition in order to make the continent a hub for manufactured products.
The theme for the two-day summit is "COMESA-Towards Digital Economic Integration" and the Zambian leader said Africa could not lag behind in the digital era as it was a vital catalyst for accelerated growth and development.
He however said Africa has a challenge of putting in place necessary support structures and resources to ensure that economies were not left behind in the digital era.
Meanwhile, the Zambian leader has expressed delight over the strides taken by COMESA over the years in promoting regional and Africa's integration agenda.
According to him, Africa's largest trading bloc was now a politically and economically stable institution which has gained the confidence of the international partners and investors.
Today, COMESA is among the most attractive investment destinations on the African continent, he added.
"It is also a well-known fact that COMESA has emerged as one of the strong and influential regional economic communities on the African continent with membership cutting cross the African continent," he said.
Sindiso Ngwenya, the outgoing secretary-general of the regional bloc said the organization has in the past 36 years made significant progress and contribution to the realization of the African economic community.
According to him, the launch of the COMESA free trading area in 2000 has resulted in spectacular growth of intra-trade exports from 1.7 billion U.S. dollars to 8 billion dollars.
