Moletsi Mbeki, the brother of South Africa’s President, believes that the private sector is key to Africa’s future development. In a recent paper of his he argues that the international donor community needs to concentrate on lending their expertise (especially regarding increasing access to finance) as apposed to their funds. He also believes that the power and voice of the private sector needs to be increased:
“Africa's private sector is predominantly made up of peasants and secondly, of subsidiaries of foreign-owned multinational corporations. Neither of these two groups have the complete freedom to operate in the market place because they are both politically dominated by others - non-producers who control the state. Herein lay the weakness of the private sector in Africa that explains its inability to become the engine of economic development. Africa's private sector lacks political power and is therefore not free to operate to maximize its objectives. Above all, it is not free to decide what happens to its savings.”
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