‘LSE will deepen platform for future African leaders to develop the continent’

The London School of Economics’ (LSE) Africa Summit 2016 had as theme “Africa in a global context”.  EKI IZEVBIGIE, chair for the Business Conference and the co-director of the LSE Africa Summit in this interview with ONYEKWELU STEPHEN highlights the objectives of the summit and its implications for human capital development on Africa’s economic and business policy choices.

What does LSE Africa Summit seek to achieve?

The LSE Africa Summit seeks to ensure balance and precision by creating and encouraging conversations on how to support Africa’s future business prosperity, and also how to effectively tackle the continent’s most prevailing challenges, with a globally diverse audience. The Africa Summit brings authentic African voices to the global stage, offering the Continent’s own perspectives, ideas and concerns to a wide variety of business professionals, and to LSE’s faculty, students and alumni. In recent years, the LSE Africa Summit and LSE Africa Talks have hosted a myriad of prominent speakers from the African developmental space –to comment on the achievements and progress of Africa within a global context.

Each year, we set key themes that are pertinent to Africa’s development and prosperity, with the objective of engaging with leaders across different spaces linking policy makers, researchers, NGOs and business professionals. Also, most importantly the Summit allows us to really engage with African voices in diaspora and on the continent to proffer recommendations that will ignite actions and guide our united efforts towards creating a more sustainable and sophisticated environment that will contribute to Africa’s prosperity in the long-term.

Are there clear benchmarks or metrics to measure the success or failure rates of the Summit’s outcome? If yes, which ones are they?

The Summit is Department of Management’s flagship event which highlights the longstanding relations that LSE has with Africa. Each year, students come together to plan the biggest student-led event, showcasing their initiative to highlight key trends and deeply rooted themes which are affecting the continent, alongside opportunities and extraordinary stories that should be celebrated beyond the continent. Students produce the content for the debate panels, gather thoughts from experts across policy, research and business, secure real authoritative African voices to lead these discussions, and share this event amongst our fellow students, alumni and the wider business community.

We have been trending on Twitter in Lagos the past two year of the summit, but this year, the trend started off in the UK, remembering the theme “Africa within a Global Context”. Then, the conversation began trending in Lagos and then Nigeria. It was highly rewarding to see that our discussion was involving more than the 500 people in the Sheikh Zayed Theatre at LSE, and clearly displayed our ability to connect with the wider audience on the continent and beyond. We have received a tremendous amount of feedback from our guests who attended this year’s conference as well as our speakers. Whilst we celebrate our success stories, there is always room for improvement – getting all 54 nation states in Africa involved in the debate in years to come will be one of our key areas for improvement.

Now, the Summit among other things calls for a shift from oil and gas to renewable energy and investment in Human Capital, are there some specifics to the Human Capital dimension you might want to identify?

We felt it was important to move the conversation on from this perception, to offer a unique perspective on the current investment ecosystem on ground, and explore how Africa’s leadership, both  in the policy and business space, can attract, retain and inspire future business leaders who can operate beyond the continent in this globalised world.

It was for that reason we had four expert panels which addressed the pertinent topics of sustainable growth in finance, technology & telecommunications, energy, and the development of human capital. At the core of these discussions was how we can invest and promote human development. The key to realising this was really involving our partners both the corporate sponsors and media partners as well as our speakers on how we can continue to collaborate beyond the LSE Africa Summit.

In regards to the shift from oil and gas to renewable energy, it felt important to move the discourse to an inclusive debate on energy, and it was vital to get this balance right. The fall in oil price crushed a number of countries in Africa, given than Nigeria’s oil accounts for roughly 75 percent of its government revenue and almost 90 percent of the country’s exports. A further estimate is that sub-Saharan Africa will lose $63 billion approximately 5 percent of the area’s gross domestic product (GDP). Oil exporters, namely; Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Nigeria, Republic of Congo and Sudan have suffered immeasurably. So how can we at the LSE Africa Summit identify with the continent’s most lucrative industry to safeguard it from economic shocks?

We felt it was extremely important to channel the conversation towards industry and product diversification, environmental and financial sustainability and corporate social responsibility within an international context. In light of all these challenges, the key problem that echoed through the discussions was that the actors who play a fundamental role in this industry; investors, governments, workforces and let’s not forget local residents in Africa’s energy sector, were not working together to realise change.

What strategies does the Summit plan to use, in order to influence policy on the Continent?

One thing we have always done each year is to include policymakers from the Continent on the Summit’s debate. African leaders from the likes of Yemi Osinbajo, Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, John Dramani Mahama, President of Ghana and InongeWina, Vice President of Zambia have all participated in our discussions over the years.

In terms of strategies for influencing policy, there is so much we can do through the LSE Africa Summit. We will continue to include state governments in our debates and create an advanced and scholastic platform for future African leaders here at the LSE to learn, challenge and develop their own philosophies that will continue to contribute to Africa’s political, social and economic development. For us to really have any impact on the continent, there needs to bear wider collaboration across borders, and I believe the LSE Summit is helping to set us on the right path.

ONYEKWELU STEPHEN