Nigerian pop star and ONE Campaign ambassador, D’banj, has tasked African leaders on the implementation of policies and ideas as the U.S-African Leaders summit kicks off in Washington D.C.
D’banj made this call while speaking on ABC News alongside Dr. Sipho Moyo, Africa Executive Director for ONE Campaign where they both discussed the upcoming U.S-African Leader’s summit- with the theme, Investing in the Next Generation.
“I will just say that president Obama should please help us. Make sure that the African leaders, implement what they propose to do. Because we have what it takes to unravel the wealth in Africa,” D’banj said when asked what he would like to hear from Obama at the summit.
Answering the same question, Dr. Sipho Moyo said “Looking forward to it and hoping that the key discussions will be around agriculture. That is the biggest potential for moving the most number of people out of poverty. I would also like to hear them talking about energy. That is holding back development in Africa. The lack of energy really holds back and hampers education, health, and particularly agriculture.”
D’banj also spoke about the success of the agriculture campaign so far. “For me, coming from Africa, it is so key for us to know what we have. If you look through, when I was approached, I wanted to start the campaign. Ten years ago, the African leaders called me and said, 10% for agriculture.”
“By the time we finish this, we have 1 million or 2 million African youth saying they want to support agriculture. I think we have struck a chord with agriculture. We polled citizens in nine countries about what their real priorities were. One thing we heard is it’s important for the leaders to invest in agriculture.”
D’banj also revealed that the success of the agriculture campaign is because “The pressure is coming from African citizens. It’s made this a very different kind of campaign and one which they- African Leaders- will keep commitments on. I think that is really what it is.”
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This article was first published on 5th August 2014
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