Opening Statement by His Excellency Ato
Shiferaw Jarso, Minister of the Ethiopian Water Resources
At the AMCOW/EXCO Meeting, 29 June 2005
Honorable College Ministers!
Ladies and Gentlemen!
I am very much delighted to welcome you
all to this session of AMCOW Executive Committee meeting.
First I want to convey my profound appreciation
for our development partners who have supported the holding and
attendance of this meeting. My special thanks goes to the UN/Water-Africa
/ CEA who have delivered untiring efforts to ensure that we can
all gather here today and deliberate on the issues revolving around
our valuable natural resource – water.
It is very much evident that water is an
essential ingredient of the soci-economic development of Africa.
Africa, posses a considerable potential of water resource potential
that can make great difference to its economic growth and development.
However this great potential is threatened by natural phenomena
and human factor including: multiplicity of trans-boundary water
basins, exceptionally variable and unpredictable rainfall, and
lack of strong institutional arrangement in managing national
and trans-national water bodies, failure to invest adequately
in water infrastructure and acute shortage of financial resource.
And hence resulting with a performance, which is far below the
potential.
As it has been indicated at different forums,
improved water resource management is a key to the achievement
of virtually all of the MDG’s. We are now at the end of
the first five years of the MDG’s planning period. However,
what we have performed so far is a very little. At this juncture
I want to emphasize that we are running out of time while we have
a lot to be done ahead of us. Hence there is still a great need
for quick actions and commitments to bring Africa out of the vicious
circle of poverty using its untapped natural resource.
There are a lot of good policies strategies
and plans put in place. What is lacking is the actual commitment
to translate all the goodwill, the initiatives and the plans into
concrete action, which calls the concerted effort of all the concerned
bodies. Thus we African ministers are very much responsible to
strengthen and mobilize a coordinated effort particularly by brining
together those bodies responsible for African economic development.
Hence it is the high time that we come together and discuss how
to pull together our dispersed efforts.
I can also say we have scheduled this meeting
on the right time as it is being held at the eve of the high-level
plenary meeting of the UN General assembly which review the five-year
implementation of the Millennium Declaration, scheduled to take
plain in New York, 14-16 September 2005. Hence we as African Ministers
are expected to feed our head of states regarding our pace towards
MDG’s. Hence we have a lot of task to deliberate on our
today’s meeting whose outcome is awaited eagerly.
Finally I wish us all a fruitful deliberation
and a pleasant stay in Addis Ababa.
Thank you all!
