During the recent international conference on private sector development in Africa, with over 150 parliamentarians, donors, private sector and civil society representatives in attendance, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame shared three basic steps on how to overcome Africa’s dependency on the West.

According to him, Africa needs to “address its infrastructure shortcomings, develop a conducive business culture and continuously ease the manner and cost of doing business.”

In his words:

“There is no reason why we should be the world’s suppliers of cheap commodities and yet remain a vast market dependent on the outside world for most of our consumption goods,” Kagame said.

“We should rapidly address our infrastructure shortcomings that range from insufficient energy, poor transport networks, to inadequate Internet connectivity. As long as these challenges remain, we will not be competitive.”