Twenty-fifth meeting of the Committee of Experts of the Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning, and Economic Development
Opening Address by Abdoulie Janneh UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa
10 May 2006
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
Mr. Chairman,
Excellencies,
Distinguished Experts and Observers,
Friends and Colleagues,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to Ouagadougou for this Twenty-fifth meeting of the Committee of Experts of the Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning, and Economic Development
Let me first, on behalf of all participants, warmly thank and express my deepest appreciation to the Government and people of Burkina Faso for offering to host this meeting. Their welcome and generous hospitality has never ceased to impress me, ever since I was first posted here at the start of my United Nations career.
I joined the ECA at the invitation of the Secretary General at a time of high expectations for Africa and a time of renewed commitment at the highest levels, both within the region and internationally, to tackling the continent's many daunting socioeconomic challenges.
I am well aware of the importance of this excellent body of experts that you are and which guides the implementation of our regional economic development agenda. I have therefore been looking forward to working fruitfully with you and the Conference of Ministers over the next few days to see how best ECA can assist its member States in defining priorities and designing policy that will help them achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and a brighter more prosperous future for their citizens.
Mr. Chairman,
In 2005, Africa received unprecedented attention from the international community within the context of the global five-year review of progress towards the MDGs and the 2005 World Summit to take stock of development trends and other events since the Millennium Summit and signing of the Millennium Declaration by world leaders in 2000.
It received this attention largely because all signs show that many, if not most of our countries, will not be reaching the MDGs on schedule. On the contrary, at the current pace, this really might not happen for another long while. Food security and the basic provision of services such as health and education, as well as the right to work and earn a decent living remain beyond the reach of most of our people.
In response to this situation, we have seen Africa move from the periphery of world events to become centre of attention. We have also seen the world give us a strong sign of confidence for our recent efforts to address our challenges.
At the 2005 World Summit, world leaders reaffirmed the centrality of the MDGs and the global partnership required to achieve them. The World Summit Outcome clearly recognizes that our continent lags behind other developing regions. And, to accelerate poverty reduction in this region, world leaders therefore agreed that Africa requires increased attention and significant support to effectively address its special needs.
Confidence, meanwhile, was expressed in the form of debt cancellation for 14 of our poorest nations, and in the promise of increased aid to be channeled into economic development. The emerging consensus now is that efforts to increase growth need to be supported by strategies for enhancing the quantity and quality of aid, together with better targeting of poverty reduction in national development agendas. Debt cancellation must be expanded and accorded to as many African countries as possible.
It was easier last year than ever before for partners to give Africa this vote of confidence. For, after years of economic stagnation, in 2005, for the third year running, the continent's growth performance exceeded expectations. I believe we are working now with an average figure of 5.3% growth in 2005.
The continent's average growth performance has demonstrated that many of our economies are maturing and applying sounder economic management principles.
However, this strong performance was uneven across the continent. And much of the average growth can be directly attributed to the continuous increase in the price of oil. In other cases, high growth occurred in economies emerging and recovering from decades of conflict, unfortunately with little immediate effect to the people in those countries.
And sadly, despite this unprecedented growth, as we are acutely aware, we are not on average on track to meet all the MDGs although several countries in the region will meet some of them. A few will meet them all.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
If the 2005, the year of the World Summit, was a year of renewed and increased commitment by our member States and international partners to concretely addressing the special needs of our beloved continent, then it is clear that 2006 must be the year in which we focus on implementation.
After the reports and pledges of last year, we now need to move to the next stage and see how to effectively implement these commitments if we want to accelerate the pace of development in the region and meet the MDGs.
In that regard, I am pleased to inform you that we, at ECA, have been working hard to assist member States to advance the implementation agenda in several key fields since January.
Indeed, since the Commission met last year in Abuja, ECA has worked hard to assist member States in a range of key areas. The Annual Report 2006 on the work of the Economic Commission for Africa is also submitted for your consideration as part of tomorrow's programme. For now, let me briefly highlight a few areas where we have been working to advance the agenda.
Already, since the beginning of this year, the ECA has co-convened a regional brainstorming on the way forward in several fora. These included the Forum for Statistical Development (FASDEV), the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) regional meeting, the African Plenary on Poverty Reduction Strategies and the MDGs, and the Climate Change experts meeting.
This meeting is another step in that process. It is also a direct result of the commitment made in the Ministerial Statement of the 2005 Abuja Conference of Ministers of Finance, Planning, and Economic Development to focus on " developing strategies for generating decent and productive work for men and women as well as youth in Africa, and to explicitly address employment generation issues in national poverty reduction strategies" in line with the 2004 AU Summit Declaration on Employment and Poverty Alleviation in Burkina Faso.
Mr. Chairman,
The choice of this year's theme for the conference, " Meeting the challenge of employment in Africa ", is without doubt timely and highly relevant to the current development agenda of the continent. As you know, broad based employment generation is crucial to the quest to significantly reduce poverty and achieve the MDGs in Africa.
The Extraordinary Summit of African Heads of State and Government on Employment and Poverty Reduction, convened in Ouagadougou in September 2004, under the leadership of the African Union Commission, therefore successfully launched the effort to focus greater attention on these concerns and scale up the intellectual and policy response in the region to the problems at hand.
As its Outcome Declaration acknowledges: " Widespread poverty, unemployment and underemployment compromise basic human rights and dignity of individuals and communities affected, and that they constitute a threat to social, economic, and political stability ."
To achieve this, the Plan of Action, emerging from that meeting, which most of you are familiar with, covers a wide range of important issues: governance; agriculture and rural development; women's access to decent work, social protection schemes for workers; and resource mobilization, to mention just a few.
The Plan of Action is a fine blueprint. But we must go beyond the planning stage. More than ever, it is up to us to act on our words, embedding the Plan of Action in national development programmes. We must also ensure that coordination amongst partners is adequate, especially with regard to institutional and human capacity.
I hope that this meeting and the documents before you will take the agenda to the next stage and lead to the adoption of an action plan to integrate employment generation policies in the development policies, strategies and plans of African countries.
Mr. Chairman,
It is clear that to rise out of poverty, the people of our continent need jobs and education. Not just any job, but one that provides a decent wage and employment conditions - so that the head of a household can lift his or her head and provide, with dignity, a better standard of living and opportunities for him/herself and his/her family. These issues were also recognized at the World Summit and captured in the Outcome document.
Building on our contributions to the 2004 Extraordinary Summit of African Heads of State and Government on Employment and Poverty Reduction, ECA understood the urgency of quickly deepening its policy work in this area. Our Economic Report on Africa 2005 was therefore dedicated to this theme. Copies of this flagship publication are available at the ECA exhibition stand for those of you who have not yet seen it.
As highlighted in our work, we face many challenges that hinder employment creation: the slow pace of employment growth; the large proportion of working poor, especially in the informal sector; the persistence of underemployment in agricultural and rural economies; the constraints faced by African women in accessing well-paid, decent jobs; the difficulties youth experience in gaining a foothold in the labour market; and the lack of reliable employment statistics.
As a consequence of this last challenge, we still have a very incomplete picture. Candidly speaking, without more and higher quality data, it is very difficult to fully understand the employment situation, and to monitor and evaluate progress towards meeting employment-related goals.
Mr. Chairman,
Distinguished Experts,
In the paper on the theme of the Conference prepared by the ECA secretariat, we propose a comprehensive framework to assist member States in implementing the Ouagadougou Plan of Action. The framework provides guidelines for governments to: embed employment in macroeconomic policies; accelerate structural transformation and diversification; promote the role of women, governance, the private sector and social development; harness globalization and regional integration; implement human resource development; and finally strengthen institutional capacities.
I will leave the details of this innovative framework to the presentation on the Issues paper. However, a number of dimensions deserve attention, and I urge you to dedicate your energy to discussing them.
The world continues to be dominated by clear economic blocks. It is up to us in Africa to join efforts to build our own powerhouse. In that respect, I see ECA's strengthened partnership with the African Union Commission as a central element of these joint efforts. It is imperative to make regional integration a reality that will benefit all of our economies, allowing us to join global competition as real players.
The mobility of labour and the movement of people are key elements to facilitate the distribution of the benefits of globalization. However, more often than not, there are barriers to this both within a country and between countries. The regional integration agenda must therefore tackle these issues.
But, we also understand the risks of opening up our economies. For example, the evidence shows that external competition may result in job losses in domestic industries. To counterbalance this real threat, we therefore must enhance productivity and the quality of our service delivery mechanisms. In this regard, governments, in close partnership with the private sector, must consider policies at the national, regional and global levels to ensure that the benefits of globalization outweigh the costs.
For example, we know that a large proportion of foreign investment on the continent has flown into the natural resource sector, where relatively few jobs are created. In order to support sectors that are more labour-intensive, member States should thus embed employment creation in investment promotion packages, especially in terms of attracting foreign investments.
It is, moreover, imperative to address the status of women on the continent by increasing their education opportunities at the primary, secondary and university levels. Furthermore, to effectively include women as productive members of our economies, we must invest in technical training such as rural extension work, health, and information technology.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
In addition, we must underscore the need to strengthen institutional capacity. This is an issue that figures prominently in the review of the implementation of the Ouagadougou Declaration and Plan of Action. It involves, in particular, supporting national statistical offices in the collection and analysis of reliable data on employment. It also entails improving the supply of employment specialists to national planning offices to facilitate the identification of employment issues, policy formulation and the monitoring and evaluation of the employment situation on a regular basis.
To move our ambitious agenda forward will require sound and lasting partnerships. This is an area ECA is increasingly focused on. In this regard, the revitalization earlier this year of the joint AU-ADB-ECA secretariat, under the leadership of the AU Commission, constitutes a very important step in enhancing partnerships at the regional level.
A partnership that has already proven to be fruitful is the PRSP-Learning Group, initiated by ECA and now being transformed into a PRS-MDG Learning Group. This will be a joint venture involving other regional institutions, the AUC and ADB in particular. You will be hearing more about some of the findings of the Learning Group in the presentation tomorrow on "Aligning Poverty Reduction Strategies with Millennium Development Goals - Progress and Challenges for African Countries" .
Another example of partnerships is our keenness to establishing a regional employment forum of technical experts and policy facilitators, drawn from the AU, ADB, ILO, Regional Economic Communities (RECs) together with ECA. The aim of such a forum is to assist member States to develop capacity and to facilitate learning and sharing of country-specific experiences. We will have the opportunity during this meeting to discuss further the modalities of such a forum.
Mr. Chairman,
Distinguished Experts,
The 2005 World Summit Outcome also provides clear orientation for improving the operations and work focus of the UN system as a whole, and the UN secretariat in particular. At the request of the Secretary General, all entities, including the ECA, were therefore recently asked to review and realign their programmes and priorities in response to the Outcome Document.
Under my leadership, ECA however is going further and looking in detail at how it can make changes to improve its operational effectiveness and impact across the board.
In this regard, I am glad to be able to share with you today some of our thinking at ECA on how we should move the institution forward to better address the special needs of African countries.
In March 2006, I established a Task Force charged with the responsibility of reviewing the current and emerging needs of the continent and making recommendations on changes that could enable us to play our role more effectively.
The Task Force members worked very hard over the past two months to deliver a first report. And I would like to take advantage of this meeting to share with you some of their initial findings and recommendations, and to further refine our way forward.
The work of the Task Force has been informed by comprehensive consultations, including with ECA staff, member States, key partners such as the AU Commission, AfDB, the RECs, members of the UN System and other stakeholders.
In repositioning ECA, the outcome of the Task Force proposes to focus on two key related areas: 1) promoting regional integration and 2) meeting Africa's special needs and the global challenges faced by the continent.
With respect to regional integration, the overarching objective for ECA should be to fully support the AU in its quest to accelerate the political and socio-economic integration of the continent, promote and defend African common positions, and establish conditions to enable the continent to fully play its role in and benefit from the global economy.
Among the new arrangements envisaged to reach this goal, ECA proposes to undertake research and policy analysis on regional integration issues as well as promoting measures and actions for implementing regional strategies and initiatives. The Commission also proposes to scale up its support help strengthen the institutions that are driving the regional integration agenda, namely the AU Commission and the RECs.
Mr. Chairman,
It is now widely recognized that the NEPAD programme, presents a well-articulated framework for addressing Africa's particular development challenges and its efforts to meet the MDGs. This was also reaffirmed in the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document. In that context, it is most important that ECA's activities under this second pillar focus on attaining the main objectives of NEPAD.
The NEPAD framework also recognizes the important role of institutions in the development process. ECA will therefore seek to offer comprehensive support, while at the same time playing to its comparative advantage.
Under the second pillar, we thus propose to concentrate our efforts on the following areas: Social Development; Food Security and Sustainable Development; Trade, Globalization and Economic Development; ICT, Science and Technology; and Governance and Development Management.
In addition to these core issues, two crosscutting themes will play a vital role in our efforts to advance the regional integration agenda and respond to the special needs of our continent, especially the MDGs agenda.
One of these themes is Statistics. In this area, working in close collaboration with the African Development Bank, we definitely need to scale-up our efforts not only in terms of data and statistical analysis but also to build capacity in our member States. In particular, we need to help countries develop performance indicators and statistics to track progress towards the MDGs.
Another crosscutting issue of the utmost importance to all of us is the need to promote gender equality and women's empowerment. In that regard, special attention must be placed on the capacity of member States to effectively implement the Beijing Platform of Action; promote women's human and legal rights; address the gender dimension of poverty; and increase women's participation in decision-making.
Distinguished Experts,
To deliver on this ambitious and comprehensive agenda, ECA will continue to focus on and deepen policy analysis as a platform for knowledge production and management, research, consensus building, advocacy and peer learning.
At the same time, to better address the new strategic priorities, the Commission's organizational structure, resource allocation and skills mix will also have to be addressed. ECA must work hard to ensure the institutionalization of a Human Resource and work environment, aligned with the principles of UN Reform that lead to improved staff motivation and performance.
To ensure long-term success, these proposed changes will also have to be underpinned by a simultaneous effort to transform the work culture of the institution into one that strongly emphasises: t rust and mutual respect; transparency, openness and access; professionalism and excellence; innovation and knowledge sharing; delegation and empowerment of staff combined with an increased accountability; and, critically, results.
These proposals for repositioning ECA reflect a need to align ECA with the regional priorities that form the African Union's programme for Africa. They are also in line with UN World Summit Outcome and the core elements of the Secretary-General's latest reform process.
They will be presented to you in more detail tomorrow when we discuss Statutory Issues and the ECA's Response to the 2005 World Summit Outcome.
I look forward to hearing your views then and to receiving your endorsement of these proposals.
As the leaders of the Commission, the direction and support of Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development is going to be critical as we move forward with this agenda for change.
I am confident that this meeting and our ongoing collaboration will help turn more general recommendations into regional and country-specific actions, which governments can implement.
Over the next few days, you as the Committee of Experts, and then the thirty-ninth Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning, and Economic Development will be addressing some fundamental development issues that we on the continent have to tackle.
I wish you all successful deliberations.
Thank you for your attention.
