This is about the challenges of and prospects for a changing Africa presented at the Africa Investment Forum.

1. Linking Investment, Security &
Innovation for a Resilient Africa:
Challenges & Opportunities in
Financing Resilience from within
Costantinos BT Costantinos, PhD
Professor of Public Policy, School of Graduate
Studies, College of Business and Economics, Chair
EITCo & AAI Capital
Africa Investment Forum
African Union Conference Center,
April 8-10, 2014

2. Africa is Rising

3. Africa is Rising

4. Africa is Rising

5. Africa is Rising

6. Africa is Rising

7. Africa is Rising
• Opportunities for IPSP
• Africa is rising
• Impressive GDP Growth
• Progress in Innovation
• Improved overall Peace and Security
• Progress in respect for Constitutional order
• DRC alone has 24 trillion worth of mineral
deposits that can be legally tapped for resilience
• Potential for agricultural investments are vast and
coming;
• Indigenous bourgeoisie growing;

8. Challenges to Innovation & Private Sector
Investment in Building Resilience
• Africa is being weaned from
• Weak institutions, corruption, impunity...
• Lack of constitutionalized order;
• Diminished role of the private sector,
• Adjustments that kill business & social
expenditure;
• Threats of force projection, destabilization
and crime that reduce resilience and breed
social unrest associated;
• Illegal natural resource exploitation;
• Ethnic, religious and regional cleavages;

9. Africa has survived and thrived long before
states, donors: What happened?
• Impact of the colonial and militaristic
legacy;
• Failed Governing Institutions (Somalia,
DRC...)
• The aid industry is the largest single
account today, after finance and hence,
the competing claims for the resources
by national and international
organizations;
• The biggest beneficiary is the private
sector: banks, insurances....

10. Analytical challenges in Innovation and
Private Sector Partnership (IPSP)
• A trend where nations are hooked to donors;
• A tendency to narrow IPSP to terms and
categories of immediate, not very well considered,
social action...;
• Inattention to problems of articulation of IPSP
within local politics than as abstract possibilities;
• Ambiguity as to whether society is the agent or
object of IPSP;
• a nearly exclusive concern in certain institutional
perspectives with generic attributes of FDIs and
consequent neglect of analysis in terms of their
specific strategies and performances;

11. Questions that linger on...
• What are the concerns of Investors?
• What is the rationale or significance of
the great traffic of FDIs, the
proliferating activities that seem to
show little regard for economy of
coordination?
• How far and in what ways do various
FDI mechanisms, forms of knowledge
and technical assistance feed on one
another in setting the boundaries of
reform?

12. What are FDI’s Needs?
• Rules & Institutions
• Policy Frameworks for Innovation
& Investment
• Do African nations have Investment
Strategic plans
• Economic Governance, Rule of Law
& Institutional arrangements
• Monitoring, Strategic Information
Management

13. Paradigms of change:
Actions required to develop adequate
IPSP based resilience transformative
agenda
• Using African resources: the AfDB
building resilience to shocks and
stresses
• Adaptive strategies of communities
• The Sustainable Livelihoods Approach
• Burden sharing - host communities
• Innovative disaster risk financing,
Local capacity development

14. The African Union @ 50...
• Challenges to Pan-African IPSP driven
Resilience & Response?
• Can the AU transcend from the perception
that it is an enclave of African elite as
opposed to a organization of African
citizens?
• How does the fact that the AU as a political
institution dependent on non-African
donors for peace and security affect citizen
resilience?
• Hence, it is deflected from its operational &
strategic concerns enshrined in The AU
Constitutive Act and numerous declarations;

15. • This potentially stems from
ideological confusion;
• Institutional incoherence;
• lack of civic base
• Predicated on the whims of its
membership that cripples
• Professionalism,
• Transparency,
• Predictability and
• Accountability
• This has resulted in neglect and
even fear the building of strategic
indigenous African institutions;

16. • Implementation deficit of Declarations,
Agreements and Programs:
• the AUC has too many stuff on its
plate to swallow.
• This brings us to the roles of
• The UN System in Africa:
• UNECA, UNDP, UNICEF...
• The AfDB
• NEPAD
• Bilateral and multilaterals....
• What is their track record in
promoting an investment
climate

17. Africa needs plural set of
political organizations,
which promote and protect
a responsible and prudent
indigenous bourgeoisie and
FDI...
Rules & institutions

18. Africa must engender a new breed
of businesses that are free of
exploitation and corruption that
can generate financial and human
resources:
The era of colonial type
emergency interventionist
development is simply untenable
Vibrant indigenous bourgeoisie

19. Creating an economic society and legal
empowerment of the poor
• Access to justice;
• Property rights;
• Labor rights
• Entrepreneurial rights
Mainstreaming Innovation & Investment in the
vision and mission of African States & Polities
• Entry points: clearly defined and focused innovation & investment entry
points in order to maintain the critical focus to make an impact.
• Frameworks: IPSP national policies or strategic frameworks should be
the frame of reference located within existing structures.
• Advocacy: IPSP sensitization and capacity building place mainstreaming
in a better position;
• Partnership: IPSP developing strategic partnerships based upon
comparative advantage, cost effectiveness and collaboration.
• Domains: the IPSP internal domain and the external domain

20. Mainstreaming Innovation &
Investment:
Vision and mission of African
States & Polities

21. Conclusion...
• Social entrepreneurship: individuals with
innovative solutions to society’s most pressing
social problems – that are ambitious and
persistent, tackling major social issues and
offering new ideas for wide-scale change.“
• Scaling up: How can the work that is being done be scaled
up to have an impact in a culturally appropriate and ethical
manner?
• Innovation: Are we doing the same thing over and over
again, expecting different results? Or are we seeking ways
of innovating and learning from other innovative practices?
• Sustainability: There is extensive discussion of the
importance of sustainability. However in reality many
projects are efforts may not be as sustainable as possible?

22. Thank you
costy@costantinos.net