African Development Bank has commended great strides made by countries in the continent to grow their respective economies despite the global financial crisis.

The bank’s President, Donald Kaberuka, who made the disclosure during an official visit to Lusaka, Zambia, said the global crisis has taught the continent how to minimize impacts that are capable of creating systemic imbalance.

Kaberuka, who delivered a keynote address on “Africa Economic Outlook and Regional Integration Priorities,” observed that the financial crisis had rather strengthened African economies.

According to a statement from the bank, “the first lesson of the current global crisis is that of building internal economic resilience by proactive policy options, which ensures that strong economic growth does not coexist side by side with massive poverty and exclusion.

“That must begin by managing the current natural resources boom differently. That in turn increases shock absorbing capacity not only economically but also socially, politically,” said Kaberuka.

He noted that the “best practices on such inclusive policies are well known and starts from getting children of poor people of both genders to quality schools, to targeted safety net programmes. We have many excellent practices to learn from, in Africa and elsewhere.”

The second lesson, according to him, was building the internal market, giving examples of several large emerging economies, which until recently were posting strong growth on the back of an export-led model.

“As demand from Europe and elsewhere weakens because of recession, countries such as China are now focusing on internal demand- the internal market. This is why I salute what this region is doing on the tripartite. That is how we will build additional resilience to global economic shocks.

“The global economic crisis is a phenomenon over which we have no control: its origin, its trajectory, its solutions. But we offer part of the solution, on condition that we are successful in breaking up our economic fragmentation.”

The AfDB boss said the next important agenda for African countries was building resilience to these external shocks, highlighting the first step as the implication for economic policy, especially for developing countries and the needed paradigm shift.

“Despite weaker fiscal positions compared to 2008, sub-Saharan African growth momentum has been maintained, on the back of exports and internal demand,” said President Kaberuka.

He said that the third lesson was the implication for Africa as a continent in financing its own development. “How to get Africa’s finance work for Africa is now more urgent than ever. To seek alternative means to finance our development. It is possible. It is doable; if all our resources – natural, human, financial – are managed and deployed differently.

“At the last IMF meeting in October, in Tokyo, we discussed the proposal for the Africa Infrastructure Bond. The idea is to invest a very small part of our external reserves of African countries, now about half a trillion dollars, into high return carefully selected infrastructure projects which are also a priority for Africa,” said Kaberuka.