Former President John Agyekum Kufuor, on Wednesday said that the nurturing of people to take up leadership positions in Africa was a prerequisite to the development of the continent.
"Leadership is key to unravelling the problems of Africa. With the right leadership, good policies would be enacted that will create the right condition for economic growth, respect of the rule of law and the conducive atmosphere for business to thrive," he said.
These were contained in a statement signed by Mr Frank Agyekum, Spokesperson of Former President Kufuor, and made available to GNA in Accra.
It said Former President Kufuor was speaking at the world launch of 'Why Africa is Poor and What Africans can do about it,' a 400-page book written by Dr Greg Mills, Executive Director of the Brenthurst Foundation of the Oppenheimer and Son Group, in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Former President Kufuor, who is member of the Board of Governors of the Foundation, said a major part of Africa's problem was that people assumed leadership positions without being adequately prepared for it and they lacked the vision and drive to pursue policies to the benefit of their people.
He said "Studies of individual historic leaders exemplified in the likes of Biblical Moses, among others, would show conclusively that each one of them had come through relevant experiences to be imbued with epochal visions of great and abiding development of their nations.
"The time when people just jumped into leadership positions should be by-gone. Budding leaders must bide their time and go through the
apprenticeship exposures and institutions to better prepare them to assume the rightful role expected of them.
Former President Kufuor said the African Union in pursuit of Renaissance Africa has launched the New Partnership for the African Peer
Review Mechanism to hasten the adoption of good governance and leadership throughout the continent as the vehicle to hasten development to mainstream the continent into globalization.
He said "I believe Africa by these acts is taking the first steps to shake off poverty and must be supported to stay the course".
Former President Kufuor said the book will go a long way to enrich the literature on Africa's development and recommended it for reading by policy analysts, academics, politicians, and researchers and those interested in Africa's development.
He said the book is in three parts: The first part examines why African states have done comparatively badly.
For a variety of undergirding explanations, it concludes that the overwhelming reason why this is so is because of bad policy decisions.
Correspondingly, where African states have done much better, better policy and leadership, stronger and improved democracy have gone hand in
hand.
The second aspect focuses on why some countries outside of Africa have done well (in terms of human development and economic growth) and third part looks at the tremendous opportunities present now to Africa in terms of
demographic dividend and demand for its resources.