The ITUC-Africa extends warm greetings to Africans, all partners and allies on the occasion of this year’s Africa Day. For us, the symbolism of commemorating this Day is based on the need to consciously and consistently place focus on Africa’s renaissance and development through aggressive mobilization of our members and Africans in spite of all odds.

Presently, the odds are daunting, but we remain resolute and committed to fight and win against these odds. Parts of the odds can be seen in the growing disillusion of our people from failed expectations after more than 50 years of independence. Poverty, unemployment, under-employment, inequality, insecurity of lives and properties, etc., remain issues that threaten our people’s wellbeing and welfare. Lamentation and blame-game will not help us and we reject them, rather we will continue to work and hope for change. In commemoration of this years Africa Day, we call on our governments to move as a matter of urgency to develop national and continental strategies and programmes to respond to pressing issues that are extending and exacerbating inequality and hardship amongst our people and communities.

In essence, we want to see real and pragmatic African strategies to tackle and counter the ingredients and factors that fuel insecurity and terrorism. Particularly, we want to see actions that will defeat extremism such as we are witnessing in Nigeria with Boko Haram; Kenya, Somalia and Uganda with Al-Shabab, and elsewhere that extremism and intolerance are fledging. The civil conflicts in the Central African Republic and South Sudan must be reined in. We call on the warring factions to observe the ceasefire agreements they have signed. It is important that human right abuses from these conflicts are investigated and perpetrators effectively sanctioned. Africa must devise and deploy imaginative policies and programmes to rein in unemployment, particularly facing the youth.

For us, direct state interventions in human capacity development and opportunities for direct employment should be at the heart of government action. We reject economic growth that does not translate to real gains for the people. We urge our governments to take genuine actions to roll-out social protection floor programs that will mitigate against the sufferings and hardship our people face daily. On our part, we will continue to campaign for tax justice as one of the means for resource mobilization to finance social spending. We emphasize that public social service delivery must work for our people. Education for all children must be guaranteed. We call on our governments to secure the full right of the girl child to education and to ensure that obstacles erected against this right are dismantled. We are committed to have zero tolerance against: discrimination against women;
early and forced marriages of the girl child; rape and all
forms of violence against women; inequality.

We reiterate our call to #BringBackOurGirls. Importantly, Africa must continue to work
at its’ industrialization agenda. We urge our governments and the AU to continue to give
real effects to the implementation of the Africa Mining Vision. Our mineral wealth must
be managed in sustainable ways to benefit our people, mineral-bearing communities and
the environment.

We are positive that Africa will and must succeed, even against the odds.

Viva Africa!

Issued on 25th May, 2014

Kwasi ADU-AMANKWAH

General Secretary