UBA Celebrates A Rising Africa

It is not in every bank that customers walk in and are served traditional snacks such as kola nuts, cashew nuts, groundnuts, fried maize, garden eggs and other African snacks.

Only customers and guests of the United Bank of Africa are currently privy to this special treatment reserved for them every year during the celebration of the Africa Day-on May 25.

   

Celebrating this year’s edition under the theme“Africa Rising”, officials and employees of UBA Cameroun, joint their colleagues in 18 other countries across the continent in keeping the tradition.

Besides sharing traditional snacks to customers, they dressed in purely African traditional outfits and played African music all daylong in commemoration of the continents splendor and enormous potentials.

An official of the pan-African bank stated during the celebrations in Douala, that “We celebrate today with renewed commitments to the dreams of the founding fathers of the continent; with the deep understanding that we are Africa’s biggest hope.”

He equally said “Africa remains our home. It represents an unending well of excitement and despite our challenges, Africa is indeed rising and becoming the continent of the future.”

Africa is a continent that is home to a third of the world’s mineral resources, a tenth of world’s oil, two-thirds of the planet’s diamonds, almost half of the world’s farmable land and a vibrant middle class.

Officials of UBA believe that it is their deep understanding of businesses and trends in Africa that has led them to being the leading pan-African Bank on the continent.

UBA currently provides finance to critical sectors of the African economy such as power, agriculture, infrastructure, ICT and other sectors which have the capacity to create employment for the growing population; a key requirement for the continent to achieve its huge socioeconomic potentials.

Worthy of note is the fact that the UBA Chairman, Tony Elumelu, Rob Hamer of Ashburton Investments and other business tycoons who took part in this month’s World Economic Forum on Africa 2016 in Kigali, were all agreed that Africa is indeed rising.

During celebrations of the 53rd Africa Union Day on May 25, 2016, Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama was also categorical when he said there is no question that the African continent is rising.

However Zambian Editor, Grieve Chelwa of Africa Is A Country, in his piece’ Is Africa really rising? History and facts suggest it isn’t’ disagrees with the “Africa rising” narrative, which suggests the continent is now well on its way to self-sustaining growth. The kind of growth that the East Asian “tigers” and the countries known as the West experienced during the times they were rising; the kind of growth that has led to a massive reduction in poverty in China within a generation. 

He is of the opinion that in addition to the numerous measures taken by governments and financing institutions, Africa needs to industrialize for it to really rise.

“Unfortunately the rhetoric around “Africa rising” is giving us a false sense of comfort and distracting us from the real work that needs to happen”, he says.