Ex-President John Agyekum Kufuor says Africa should stop being dumping sites for the Western World.

Addressing a gathering of West African contingents at the La Palm Royal Beach Hotel in Accra during the official launch of the West African Think Tank Network (WATTNet) on Tuesday, Ex-President Kufuor noted that Africa has over the years been overly dependent on imports and so cannot utilize the resources of the land to revamp the continent.

He expressed worry over the non-exploitation of the natural resources embedded in the African soil.

“We also, on the economic front, should make our people from government right down to the people generally aware of what’s happening. The world in terms of the market is fast globalizing and the one attribute of the global market that we must come to terms with is the fact that our competitiveness is the demand. So if we want to hold our corner in the global market, we should operate with global standards.

“Otherwise, we become dumping grounds. For instance, in Ghana here, we have lands. We have water courses that could support quite viable rice production but what do we find. We see that we are dumping sites for rice imported from as far away as Vietnam, China, Japan, India and farmers are not able to compete with the produce from those far-off places.”

Ex-President Kufuor was delivering a keynote address at a two-day official launch and inaugural conference of the West African Think Tank Network under the theme “Transforming West Africa for Inclusive Development”.

The West African Think Tank Network (WATTNet) is a network of think tanks in West Africa established in September 2015 with the goal of promoting socio-economic and political development in the sub-region.

WATTNet seeks to establish a viable sub-regional platform which will enable sustained collaboration among research institutions and think tanks in the region.

The former President advised African leaders to resource local producers to compete on the international market.