Statement by Mr. Mohamed Tawfik, Chairman
UN-Water Africa
Your Excellency Ms. Maria Mutagamba, President
of AMCOW;
Your Excellency, Ato Shiferaw Jarso, Vice President of AMCOW and
host of this meeting;
Your Excellencies, Members of AMCOW Executive Committee
Colleagues of AMCOW/TAC and UN-Water Africa;
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentleman
It is my pleasure to represent UN-Water Africa at this important
meeting. First of all on behalf of the members of UN-Water Africa
I would like to express our thanks and deep appreciation to the
President of AMCOW, Honorable Maria Mutagamba and the Vice President
Ato Shiferaw Jarso for inviting UN-Water Africa to participate
in this important meeting. We appreciate the effort and excellent
arrangement made for a successful meeting.
Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentleman,
The development of an African organ for
policy making and guidance in the Water sector has been a desire
of the UN system for decades. It is with a great pleasure therefore,
that AMCOW was launched in Abuja in 2002. I must congratulate
the founders of this important body including Honorable Shagari,
Minister of Water Resources Nigeria, Honorable Macky Sall P.M
of Senegal, H.E. Dr. Abu Zaid, Minister of Water Resources Egypt
and Honorable Kasrils, Minister of Intelligences, Honorable Mole
leke, Minister of Foreign Affair Lestho Honorable Shiferaw Jarso,
Minister of Water Resources Ethiopia and others.
The UN Agencies are proud to have contributed
to the process of formation and consolidation that continues actively.
Special mention must be made of the great efforts of UNEP that
has been the Task Manager of the UN System for support of AMCOW
since its inception. It is also worth mentioning the logistic
support of UNECA through hosting UN-Water Africa Secretariat and
facilitating these meetings.
Within the available resources to the UN
Agencies, I would like to assure Your Excellencies that UN-Water
Africa intends to continue as your partner of choice. We will
endeavor to avail these resources to you in a concerted and efficient
manner.
Your Excellency, Chairperson
Honorable Ministers
Distinguished guests
The implementation of Africa’s Water
Agenda must be premised on sustained and productive partnerships.
We will assist you to translate all the analysis of our meetings
from Gaborone through The Hague, Accra, Bonn, Johannesburg and
Kyoto and not only in to actions but concrete and costed actions
which will serve as the basis for implementing the African Water
Vision 2005.
The United Nations convening capability
cannot be discounted and out efforts during the International
Decade “Water for Live” will be geared towards maintaining
the high profile for finding lasting solutions for the challenges
facing African water development.
UN-Water Africa is the inter-agency mechanism
that promotes coherence in, and coordination of, UN system actions
aimed at the implementation of the agenda defined by the Millennium
Declaration and the World Summit on Sustainable Development as
it relates to its scope of work.
Our Global body, the UN-Water Global has
already designated Africa as the only regional priority in addition
to the thematic priorities of water scarcity, pollution, disaster
management and others.
UN-Water Africa’s primary goal is
to ensure effective system-wide action and inter-agency collaboration
at the African regional and sub-regional levels. This is being
pursued by facilitating exchange of information policy and program
dialogue, promoting mutual support between regional and headquarters
levels, and supporting activities and arrangements led by the
UN regional commission which in our our case is the ECA. It is
also to support AMCOW and NEPAD in achieving the Millennium Development
Goals in Africa.
We are proud to have been your partner
in setting out Africa’s Water Agenda and will continue to
work with you in finding lasting solutions to our water problems.
The key principles underlying this efforts are inclusiveness,
broad ownership and effective cooperation. This entails creating
space for the non-governmental actors including academic and research
institutions, NGOs and CBOs to not only participate in the Implementation
but also to share ownership and contribute towards solving our
water problems which is a pre-requisite for Africa’s overall
socio-economic development.
Your Excellencies,
Distinguished Guests,
In conclusion, I wish to reassure you
of UN-Water Africa’s commitment to continue assisting AMCOW
in implementing their plan to achieve their goals.
I wish to thank you all, once again for
this opportunity to address this distinguished gathering and look
forward to very fruitful cooperation between UN-Water Africa and
AMCOW.
I wish you successful deliberation.
Thank you for your attention.
