Tajudeen Charges African Nations on Employment Generation, Financial Prudence

Abbas Tajudeen, the speaker of the House of Representatives, has given African countries the responsibility of generating jobs and preventing income loss in order to ensure the economic future of the continent.

At the commencement of the seventh Annual African Network of Parliamentary Budget Offices meeting in Abuja, Mr. Tajudeen delivered the charge.

The week-long conference’s theme is “The Role of PBOs in African Parliaments: Contribution to the African 2063 Development Agenda” in relation to fiscal oversight.

People from Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, Cape Verde, Gambia, Somalia, Uganda, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Tanzania, Malawi, and Liberia attended the meeting.

Africa, home to around 1.4 billion people, or one-sixth of the world’s population, is at a pivotal juncture in its history, the speaker added.

According to the congressman, the African continent is young, developing, and full of great potential.

With a population of over 200 million and a projected GDP of $477 billion in 2022, Nigeria bears a unique duty in this African tale.

“The African Union’s Agenda 2063, which serves as the blueprint for the Africa we desire, reflects our ambitious goals and we are a continent full of smart young people and plentiful resources. But the road to achieving this goal is still rocky,” he stated.

He said Sub-Saharan Africa was seeing a slight recovery in economic development, with the World Bank predicting an uptick from 3.3% in 2024 to 3.5% in 2025.

“While positive, this is insufficient to address our development needs at this time. As of 2024, 464 million Africans are predicted to be living in extreme poverty, demonstrating the pervasiveness of poverty, Mr. Tajudeen stated.

He went on to say that underemployment and unemployment, particularly among youth, were pressing problems.

Only about three million formal employment are created annually, despite 12 million young Africans entering the workforce. This opportunity gap demonstrates a demographic dividend that, if we do nothing, might become a demographic risk,” he cautioned.

Government budgets must appropriately reflect development goals in different countries, including national and continental development plans, and be backed by strong supervision systems, according to Mr. Tajudeen.

Africans looked on their parliaments, he added, to carefully match public spending with more general development goals and to take citizens’ opinions into account when making fiscal decisions.

The African Development Bank estimates that capital flight costs Africa around $587 billion a year, the speaker said.

According to him, the money departed the continent via a variety of means, including profit shifting by international firms, corruption, illegal commerce, and mispricing.

He said it was estimated that corruption alone costs Africa $148 billion a year.

Nigeria, the speaker said, served as a warning about the difficulty and necessity of supervision.