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African leaders and the imperative of smoother, value-driven migration management
African leaders are meeting this weekend at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and characteristically, there will be many issues on the table. In our considered opinion however, this summit should only be about one issue: the imperative of inaugurating a workable regime for smoother, value driven migration management.
Accross the continent today, there are pockets of challenges. But central to many of these are the faulty legal, political and economic sub-systems that are in place. There is a sense for example in which the Nigerian herdsmen crisis is hegemonistic. However, underpinning this are the legal, economic and political constructs that are in place and which need to be urgently reworked.
It is a similar challenge in a sense with the Oromo crisis in Ethiopia. Africa needs to draw back, re-assess its intra-state relations and make pragmatic and justice-based adjustments as they arise.
But even as these are being contended at the national levels, there is also the imperative of loosening barriers to inter-peoples cooperation on the broader continental level. But these must also be based on the inherent supremacy of the natural principles of justice.
Here specifically, we urge the leaders of the continent today to look more critically and indeed most altruistically at the issues of intra-continent migration all over again. Once more, it is on the burner at this summit. But we must pay more than lip service to it. We must empanel a functional intra-African migration policy that works for the good of all of the peoples of the continent. And the time to do it is now. At this summit.
We commend the nations of Rwanda and Ghana that have since gone to put their money where their mouth is on this subject. In inaugurating visa-on-arrival schemes for all Africans in their respective nations, they have demonstrated sound leadership. Generations of pan-Africanists from Garvey to Nkrumah to Azikiwe would indeed be very proud of them.
We wish all of the assembled leaders of the continent at this historic 30th Summit of Heads of States very productive deliberations. The continent is counting on you. Do not fail us.
President Nana Akufo Addo of Ghana
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