Find homegrown solutions to Africa’s problems’ – Obasanjo charges leaders

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has charged African leaders to find homegrown solutions to the various problems facing the continent.

Obasanjo spoke on Wednesday while playing host to a delegation of students and youths from several African countries at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL), Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital.

The delegation, among whom were students leaders from Ethiopia and the Tigray Region, was led by Osisiogu Osikenyi, the President of All-African Students Union (AASU).

The students were on a ‘Thank you visit’ to Obasanjo for facilitating the permanent end to hostilities agreement between the government of Ethiopia and the Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Front (TPLF) in Pretoria last year.

Obasanjo said Africa must consider the peculiarities of its people in designing and implementing workable homegrown solutions to its challenges.

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According to the former President, the African Union led in finding homegrown solutions to Africa’s problems with the manner in which it resolved the civil war between Tigray and Ethiopia.

“It is a great lesson for us to know that whatever may be our problem – political, economic, social – in Africa, we can solve them if we go about seeking solutions rightly.

“The peace that we were able to achieve in Tigray between TPLF and the Federal Government of Ethiopia is what you and I will regard as finding African solution to African problem. And this is what our leaders have been clamouring for, even from independence in the early 1960s.

“No problem in Africa is too great for us to solve where there may be problem of peace, insecurity, youths unemployment, youths lack of empowerment, youths frustration and of course, general bad governance,” Obasanjo said.