PARIS - A conference on: "Which Development Models for Africa: Reflections on Tunisia's Development Model," was held on Tuesday in Paris by the International League of Journalists for Africa (ILJA).
The conference was an opportunity to pay tribute to the Tunisian development experience carried out by President Ben Ali, which allowed Tunisia to totally transform its status in two decades to become an emerging country.
Outlining the reasons which led the association to analyse the Tunisian experience, chairman of ILJA, Cameroonian journalist and writer Valentin Mbougueng, said the Tunisian model is at the present the most coherent and most successful economic and social development model in Africa.
He pointed up some of characteristics of this model: "the quality of political governance which allowed Tunisia to witness a long political stability, as well as a climate of social peace; the pertinent of economic choices which helped build a strong economy based on healthy macro-economic foundations and propelled by high added-value sectors; a vigorous policy of remittances which empowered the country to make the most of the human capital, build a society where the middle class accounts for 80% of the population and where the rate of poverty was brought down to 3.8% of the country's population." The major lesson drawn from the Tunisian experience, the lecturer underlined, is that "a people can not develop from imported and externally adapted models and, accordingly, it is necessary for each people to find its own way."
Senegalese journalist N'faly Savané, former editor of Sud Quotidien de Dakar daily, co-author of the collective work "Emerging Tunisia: a Way for Africa?", stressed, in turn, the modernity of the Tunisian society and liberation of Tunisian women who have become full-fledged partners and an essential pillar of the country's progress.
Mr. Nicolas Abena, Director of online magazine I- Magazine, also co-author of the collective book on "Emerging Tunisia," emphasised President Ben Ali's actions for the Tunisian communities abroad which favour integration of Tunisian expatriates in development programmes.
Mr. Abena argued that this is a model to follow, just like, he said, the policy of support to youth which is the centre of interest of the Tunisian Head of State, contrary to what is seen elsewhere in Africa.
Mr. Louis Magloire Keumayo, Director of Information at television channel A3 Télésud and Chairman of the Pan-African Press Association, stressed the need for African countries, some twenty of which are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of their independence, to retake their history and their political, economic and social development process, the way Tunisia did.
© Agence Tunis Afrique Presse 2009
