Private sector in Africa needs preferential treatment, says Amany Asfour

Amany Asfour, the president of the Africa Business Council, has said Africa needs to have preferential treatment for its private sector to grow rapidly.

She said governments in Africa must make a deliberate effort to put in place an enabling environment for the African private sector to succeed.

Speaking with Nana Yaa Mensah on Sunday Night on Asaase 99.5 Accra, Asfour said: “We need to continuously empower the private sector in Africa and we need to have preferential treatment for the sector.

“We [the private sector] need positive discrimination because unless we have special preferential treatment for the private sector in Africa, the sector will grow slowly …

“We can have partnerships with everybody but we need to manage our own resources … we can partner with everybody but this must be based on our own terms and conditions …” she said.

Business linkages

Dr Asfour believes all businesses on the continent, including small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) should have equal opportunities to access information and the right financing.

She said there is a need for the African continent to open up in terms of access to information.

“… SMEs are subjected to the same conventional requirements from the banks, which makes it very difficult for them to have access to finance, especially with the high interest rates … but it is also important to beef up the capacities of our SMEs to have bankable projects …

“The outreach of the African private sector is huge and I believe the Africa Business Council comes in here to see how we address all issues of access to information to everybody on the continent through the regional economic blocs …

“There should be business linkages among ourselves and we should really have trade missions among ourselves to realise the [objectives] of the AfCFTA, which is a flagship programme of the continent,” Dr Asfour said.