Sustainable security measures by the African governments has been identified as vital to the continent’s bid to attract investments, protect existing investments and create sustainable decent jobs. 

Vice-president of IndustriAll Global, Issa Aremu, speaking at the weekend during the 2020 Africa industrialization Day (AID) commemoration activity and webinars organized by Industriall Global Union, coordinated in Lagos and Johannesburg, South Africa, said the increasing spate of insecurity on the continent caused by insurgencies, banditry and avoidable wars undermine investment and industrialization in Africa.

On Nigeria’s security challenges, Aremu  noted that the activities of bandits all over the country were undermining farming, agro-allied activities and industrial expansion.

“Insecurity will further make Nigerian industries uncompetitive with negative impacts on employment,” he said. 

The labour leader also added that there can be no industrialization without electrification.

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He urged all African governments “to massively invest in energy mix of hydro, solar and nuclear to drive industrialization.”

Aremu equally lamented that, while industry is the key driver for sustainable jobs and development for national economies and the foundation of good living standards, Africa is still exporting raw cotton, crude oil, mineral resources, gold and diamond only to be importing finished manufactured goods from China, Europe and America and in the process exporting jobs. He, therefore, called for appropriate industrial policies to re-industrialize Africa.

According to him, there is a nexus between industry and sustainable jobs. He said the underlying condition for the  recent #ENDSARS protests and its violent fallout was “massive unacceptable” unemployment and underemployment, “Sustainable mass jobs can only come from industry and manufacturing. Decent jobs, should not be an act of charity but as a necessary condition to promote productivity, transform Nigeria and Africa from underdevelopment, from dependence to sustainable development.”

He stressed that “Africa must copy China’s industrialization drive and diversification, which within 20 years, moved over 250 million people out of poverty through manufacturing and industrialization.”

In 1989, the United Nations General Assembly, proclaimed 20 November “Africa Industrialization Day”. Annually, the UN Industrial Development Organization, an agency of the UN for economic and industrial development raises awareness on the need for industrial development in Africa. The 2020 AID theme was “Inclusive and sustainable industrialization in the AfCFTA and COVID-19 era”.