East Africa region will be now shaped by integration

These alone shows why we should address issues of gender equality as the two gender have a role in development.

We also make a mistake thinking that the low income citizens are looking for free things. No they are not, they are looking for reliability and affordability. One of the ways of addressing it is by education. We ought to ensure that there is access to quality education for all citizens.

We should focus on more university graduates and more technical vocational trained personnel.We have stuck with the colonial methods and forms of education.

We are not preparing learners who come out of school for the business or practical world. They have become very academic. Right now an emerging economy needsvocational training. By and large on a country by country basis, vocational training is a critical success factor.

If you look at the trend in a number of African countries, there is a trend of converting vocational training centres into universities which leads to producing graduates with inadequate skills for the market.

It became sort of fashionable to have a degree.We should also tap into the available technologies to rollout education to schools across the continent and Tanzania in particular. We can leverage on digital technologies to transform our education systems.

In the same vein, we should look at alternative ways to generate power for instance such as solar and wind. These are ways we can easily harness to reduce the energy deficit.

Regional integration can help in the sense that countries with surplus can sell to those with deficit. Proper integration will connect grids.In readiness for the social economic transformation ,the fourth industrial revolution has to be a link with education.

We have to ensure that our education is as per our industrial needs. Our education systems require revolutionalising to move towards the needs of the future.We have a lot of children out of school and some of our curriculum is also outdated.

Then there is the issue of governance. Good governance is key in the development and in ensuring policies that attract and retain the business community.

The current global economic slowdown has hit Africa quite bad, commodity prices, Chinese economy slowdown, European down turn, volatility in currency and national disasters among others.However, despite the economic slowdown, Africa is projected to have the fastest growth rate across the world.

A great level of investment will still come to Africa but by and large, the expectations of investors will take a granular and measured approach.

As they position their investment, it is about taking a strategic decision on having a long term vision.Whereas the external factors have affected the continent quite significantly, the IMF has predicted that the growth in sub-Saharan Africa will be 3 per cent.

We also have some countries that are growing way above that rate one of them being Rwanda.If you look at the trend in the last five to ten years, Rwanda has been growing at above 6 per cent.

That is very encouraging. The reason for this is the diversification of the economies and less reliance on one sector.

In Rwanda we have diversification in financial sector, services sector and tourism among others. The future for Africa and East Africa is good and a lot will be shaped by integration.