The 2016 presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has charged African youth to take up challenges which are facing the continent. 

Speaking at the 2016 graduation ceremony of the University of Fort Hare in South Africa where he was awarded an Honourary Doctor of Law Degree on Thursday, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo said: “You have to help banish the disgraceful spectre of young Africans dying in the Mediterranean, seeking greener pastures in Europe.” 

According to Nana Akufo-Addo, the African continent might have achieved political liberation and liberal democratic governments may be in place in many parts of the continent,  but the struggle for rapid economic development is very far from being won.

The NPP flagbearer bemoaned that fact that, while hundreds of millions of Asians are currently being taken out of poverty, because of successful governance, hundreds of millions of Africans, living on the world’s richest continent, continue to wallow in abject poverty as a result of poor governance.

He said, “Your generation has to ensure the fulfilment of the statement made almost 70 years ago in 1949 to the Gold Coast Legislative Assembly by Joseph Boakye Danquah, the father of modern Ghanaian nationalism, that ‘the two things go together, economic freedom and political freedom. And we must have the two together in this very age, and in the shortest possible time’”.

Highlighting the importance of the work of his compatriot, Kwame Nkrumah, the NPP flagbearer stressed that African unity, through the political and economic union of the continent, remains the most effective context within which to maximise the collective power of the African peoples, and achieve the continent’s full potential.

“Others have done so in America, in Europe and in Asia. We must do the same in Africa. We cannot continue to be either the pawns or the victims of history. We have a huge, unique contribution to make to the growth of world civilisation. It is time for us to step forward,” he added.