Since businesses around the world started getting emphatic about the principles of best practice, the focus on how to handle processes of business concerns became more pronounced.
But as much as different people and organisations in different businesses may claim to be upholding the best approaches to doing their business, participants at the World Economic Forum on Africa (WEFA) which held in Abuja between May 7 and 9, 2014, took down notes pointing out what should be done to get the ‘best practice’ act as should be.
Among its recommendations is what it called the need for ‘Inclusive Growth.’ From the discussions at the forum, inclusive growth demands the representation of the interest of every group of persons. This, it said, should not just be about numbers, but what each group truly requires to fit in meaningfully to the scheme of economic affairs.
An example may be drawn from the electronic warehousing facility that was recently introduced by government to help improve the monetary value of agricultural produce. And as explained by the ministry of agriculture, farmers could store certain produce until they can be sold at more profitable price.
The reference being made here is that such facility should be managed by farmers’ associations in collaboration with professional administrators for effective and sustainable result, and it is only then that we can be talking of ‘inclusive growth.’ The public has seen the results in situations where mere administrators run aground institutions for lack of depth understanding of the values attached to such projects.
While WEFA noted that it was important and necessary to have a healthy population to achieve economic growth, it is sadly laughable seeing that with Abuja as host of the forum, the country is still bedevilled with strike actions by medical doctors who are pressing for improvement in the sector.
It is also worthy of note that the striking doctors embarked on a 3-day warning strike before declaring a full-scale strike action. So, if it was profitable to have hosted the forum and learned that the nation needed healthy people to make economic impact, government should have known what to do. Across the nation’s health institutions, patients who are suffering from various ill-health conditions have been left to their fate.
On the recommendation for improved standard of education, the sickening education sector made the call necessary. It is so because a well-structured and functioning education system remains the bedrock for building a strong economy in terms of knowledge and acquisition of skills.
Ironically, the WEFA recommendation for improved education may just have ended where it was made, considering the length of time (eleven months and still counting) that some federal polytechnics like Yaba College of Technology have been on strike. The Lagos State University has also been out of the school academic session following unresolved differences over hike in school fees.
Since the world economic forum meant well for the nation’s economic development, it highlighted the importance of science and technology to drive the development of the different sectors of the economy. And if electricity generation and distribution plays a vital role in powering technology to a large extent, then there is still a long way to go.
The good thing is that even if the nation has not decided to put the WEFA recommendations into perspective to move the economy valuably, kudos can still be given to states like Ogun and Akwa Ibom that have toed the path by holding their economic forum to showcase investment opportunities and actually driving the initiative to profitability as a best practice to the benefit of the state.
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