The African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) has pledged continued support to the Government of Rwanda as a way of facilitating the country achieve its vision of becoming a middle income economy by 2020.

ACBF executive secretary Emmanuel Nnadozie told The New Times, yesterday, that Rwanda still needs more capacity building in various sectors to continue sustaining the already achieved economic gains made in recent years.

ACBF has invested more than $10 million in Rwanda since 2000 to fund several public and private sector projects.

Apart from Rwanda, the Foundation has also been at the forefront of assisting different African countries strengthen their institutions.

ACBF has previously provided training in Private Sector Federation by giving private business owners the capacity to engage with government, especially in eliminating barriers to effective operations of the private sector.

"We have trained various Rwandan government officials in the Ministry of Finance and other public sectors. This has greatly played a pivotal role in sustaining the strength of government institutions,” Nnadozie, adding that he was looking forward to a discussion with government on how the Foudnation can continue being of help.

Nnadozie is in Kigali where he attended the African Transformation Forum where experts, policy-makers and government officials from across Africa were charting ways to transform African economies so the continent can compete globally.

He said, with continued support, government will be able to have adequate skilled workforce that will drive the country’s economic transformation and eventually turn the country into middle income status.

Other areas include strengthening the indigenous capacity for policy formulation through the creation of an autonomous public think-tank and strengthening the capacity of the country in strategic human resources management.

Lack of sufficient skilled force is among the challenges to developing economies, leading governments to spend more on expensive foreign expertise.

Experts attending the forum believe that strengthening institutions and providing sufficient capacity to professional individuals will be a mechanism to help transform African economies.

Neway Bebreab, an economic advisor to the Ethiopian Prime Minister and executive director of Ethiopia Development Research Institute, said countries need clear strategies to drive economic development.

"We have to put up strategies that are ambitious and feasible to make socio-economic change to our societies,” he said.

Other challenges cited include poor leadership, incompetent workforce, inadequate infrastructure, like poor roads network, as well as political instability that leads to destruction of existing infrastructure and loss of lives.

Participants noted that governments spend much time in discussions on how to get rid of some challenges like trade barriers, which eventually fail to work due to lack of political commitment.

Richard Sezibera, the secretary-general of East Africa Community, called on African countries to open up the market and allow free movement of labour.

"We can’t talk about transforming Africa if our people are not freely moving. There are still barriers to movement and we are not trading within ourselves. We need to promote intra-regional trade and allow our people to move freely,” he said.

editorial@newtimes.co.rw