PAN-AFRICAN PARLIAMENT: President of the Republic of Kenyya Dr. William Samoei has challenged African leaders to use the continent’s abundant green energy to position itself as a green industrial hub and take a lead in handling the climate change challenges affecting the world.
President Ruto made the remarks on Wednesday 17 May 2023 during the Pan-African Parliament Summit on Climate Policy and Equity in South Africa.
He called on nations in the Global North to relocate industries to Africa and bring to an end the use of fossil fuels.
“We have all that it takes to grow our industries and make Africa the clean, green factory of the world,” he said.
The President said relocating industries to Africa will strengthen the continent’s balance of trade, ease pressure on African currencies and mitigate the vulnerability arising out of dependency on capricious supply chains.
The President said Kenya is leading in renewable energy usage.
“An emerging psychology of victimhood implicates both African and global leadership in a politics of pity and helplessness. It also denies the world’s youngest continental repository of unparalleled abundance the urgency to articulate appropriate solutions to its own problems and to offer its unique, indispensable contributions on the broader global stage,” Ruto said.
Ruto, also Chair of the Committee of African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change, further said that African leaders will now push for a fresh, affirmative and solution-oriented perspective that will see a fundamentally Pan African principle that summons the world to live, produce and consume in harmony with nature.
“We have the largest green energy potentials. We are saying we have the assets, come with your technologies, we meet half way and we find the solutions. We want to be part of the solution. Do not consign us to the problem,” Ruto added.
The Kenyan leader said that Africa has the potential to remove over 300 million
tonnes of carbon dioxide every year through nature-based solutions like landscape restoration, reforestation and mangrove forest protection and expansion.
“We want to make Africa a clean and green factory of the world. If Africa is indeed the young, green continent of the future and the locus of the next industrial revolution, African solutions are no longer restricted to Africa’s problems, they also address humanity’s problems effectively,” he said.
At the same time, President Ruto called for the reconfiguration of the United Nations to meet the needs of the Global South that is currently disadvantaged.
“Africa demands and deserves two permanent seats at the Security Council,” he said.
The continental MPs are in South Africa to attend the Second Ordinary Session of the Sixth Pan African Parliament. Uganda’s representatives to the Pan African Parliament welcomed the remarks by the Kenyan President and said that indeed Africans need to rally themselves and tackle the climate change challenges.
Present were President of the Pan African Parliament Chief Fortune Charumbira, Chairperson of the African Union Commission Moussa Faki Mahamat, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations Dr. Amina Mohamed, Senate Speaker Amason Kingi among other leaders.
Uganda will be hosting the Third Ordinary Session of the Sixth Pan African Parliament in Kampala between 19 October and 05 November 2023.
Credit: State House Kenya
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