Mr. Chairman,

Your Excellency, Mr. Mekonnen Manyazewal, Vice-Minister in the Ministry of Economic Development and Cooperation of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia,

Your Excellencies, Ambassadors and Plenipotentiaries,

Distinguished Members of TEPCOW/Intergovernmental Group of Experts,

Distinguished Observers,

Colleagues,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Welcome to this year’s meeting of the Technical Preparatory Committee of the Whole and the Intergovernmental Group of Experts. I would like to thank the Vice-Minister in the Ministry of Economic Development and Cooperation for his opening statement at this year’s meeting. We also wish to express our gratitude to the Government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia for their continued support of the work of the Commission.

Mr. Chairman,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a pleasure to be with you once again, seeking your expert and pragmatic guidance on salient policy issues -- and major challenges of Africa’s development, as a key step in shaping a responsive work program for the Commission.

You will recall that the 1997 sessions of the Commission, and of the Conference of Ministers of Finance respectively, focused on issues of trade, investment and financial sector reforms, and debt management in Africa. The theme of this year’s conference: The Challenge of Financing Development in Africa is intended to build on the outcomes of the 1997 meetings.

This year’s session of the Commission is organized as a Joint Conference of the Ministers responsible for Economic Development and Planning, and the Ministers of Finance, to emphasize the convergence of the development, finance and planning functions, and to enable the Ministers and Central Bank Governors to reflect on this important theme, together with Africa’s development partners.

On the eve of a new millennium, Africa faces several challenges, key among which are poverty reduction and sustainable development. Since the great majority of Africans are in poverty or very near to poverty, African Heads of State and Government have endorsed the UN target of reducing poverty by half by the year 2015. This implies a reduction of poverty by 4 percent per annum. In order to meet these targets Africa would need to raise its GDP growth rates to an average of 7 per cent per annum for the region as a whole, compared to an average of 4.5 per cent annually during 1995-98.

ECA’s estimates of the magnitudes of external resources required to attain these poverty reduction targets are so massive that we have concluded they are not likely to be attained. This is particularly so as Africa has not benefited in the past from large inflows of private capital, compared to other developing regions. We also face the prospect of continued shrinkage in official development assistance.

Mr. Chairman,

In this situation, African countries must step up their effort to mobilize domestic resources for sustainable development and poverty reduction, through policies to raise savings, including tax reforms, financial and capital market reforms, and sound interest rate policy management. Such measures could strengthen Africa’s transition from public sector-led development, to a private sector-driven partnership, where the public sector enables a conducive environment for non-speculative private investment.

There is a growing recognition that on matters of resource flows, aid, debt and trade should be viewed in a holistic and integrated framework for financing the continent’s development. This framework was advocated by the UN-Secretary-General also, in his Africa report to the Security Council last year. We believe that the agenda of the conference will allow a fruitful exchange of views on many of the key elements for an effective holistic framework.

A holistic framework for resource flows is useful not only to us, but I would like to suggest, also to Africa’s development partners. Our partners can play a crucial role in supporting Africa’s development by maintaining adequate flows of ODA, increasing resources for financing the HIPC Initiative, further debt cancellation, and enhancing market access for Africa’s exports.

I believe that the challenges around these issues provide a sufficient basis for informed discussion, with a view to finding more enduring solutions to these problems.

Mr. Chairman,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Economic Report on Africa 1999 is before you for consideration and will provide a useful backdrop for discussion of the conference theme. The report examines the African economy and reviews the social and economic situation in the past year.

In 1998, Africa enjoyed its fourth consecutive year of positive GDP growth at 3.3 per cent, despite global financial and currency turmoil. However, this favourable outcome cannot be assumed to mean that the average African economy has crossed the critical threshold to a self-sustainable, poverty-reducing growth path, as the growth rate is not high enough, nor sufficiently broad-based, or sustained long enough, to make a real dent in poverty. Moreover, African economies remain vulnerable to exogenous economic and non-economic shocks, such as movements in international commodity prices, erratic weather conditions and civil conflicts. Additionally, the factors, decline in ODA flows, the debt overhang and the lack of competitiveness for African products make it impossible for African economies to sustain the level of growth needed to achieve poverty reduction in the short to medium term.

The report has a new feature. Countries are ranked according to annual performance, economic sustainability and economic policy stance indices. Also, an analysis is given of the policy implications of these indices from the perspective of achieving the developmental objective of reducing poverty by half over the next fifteen years. ECA is committed to identifying the best cases within Africa’s development to facilitate peer exchanges of information between policy leaders. These indices help in this regard.

Mr. Chairman,

A central issue in economic performance and policy evaluation is the sustainability of growth. For most African countries now on the verge of recovery, the capacity to sustain growth and development over time is fraught with uncertainty.

The major mistake of the past two decades has been the focus on macro-economic stabilization to the neglect of "capacity, structural, and institutional" elements. While stabilization is necessary, it has entailed sacrificing resources needed to build the requisite institutions and infrastructure, and to invest in human capital development and retention, to the peril of Africa. Policies with the twin goals of macro-economic stability and growth sustainability have been overlooked, explaining why the membership of the club of "high performing countries" keeps changing because it is based only on year-to year growth of per capita GDP, not the sustainability of that growth. These are the urgent tasks before African leaders and policy-makers.

Mr. Chairman,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The past three years have been marked by a consolidation of the gains from the reform process, which ECA embarked upon in 1996. We have strengthened our capacity to focus on issues important to the changing development agenda of African countries. Our outreach and service to member States is increasing, and we are beginning to realize our potential as a regional policy centre, a networking hub, and a clearinghouse for best practices and development information. Although much remains to be done, I am confident that the progress of the last three years provides us with a solid foundation to build on.

The Report on the Work of the Commission, 1996 –1998, which is also before you, details the major activities undertaken during the period. The reforms reflect deliberate policies to expand partnership with other international and regional organizations; use of ECA’s convening power to foster dialogue and consensus on Africa’s development; and focus on the key policy issues on Africa’s development agenda. Three major policy activities are highlighted in the report: the African Information Society Initiative (AISI); Enhancing women in development and leadership, and promoting private investment in Africa. I will touch on each in turn.

First, Information. Considerable work has been undertaken by ECA in the last three years to advance the implementation of the African Information Society Initiative (AISI). You will recall that the Initiative was adopted at the 1996 ECA Conference of Ministers, as the blueprint for the development of information and communication infrastructure in Africa through networking with African governments, UN agencies, bilateral, multilateral, and private partners. Improved communications and information exchange are key to ameliorating risk perception, lowering transaction costs, and strengthening the competitiveness of African products.

If African and foreign business partners can be linked through modern communication technologies including the Internet, and if quality information about economic opportunities in Africa and overseas can be easily obtained in Africa, African businesses can tap global networks to locate lucrative opportunities which they can exploit. For African countries to be part of the global economy, we must make full use of information technology, of which telecommunications are the base.

To advance the objectives of AISI, public policies are needed to address a range of serious impediments, including inadequate telecommunications systems, restrictive laws and regulations obstructing the flow of information, and the shortage of trained professionals in computers, data management, science, engineering and business.

Second, I want to mention our promotion of women in development and leadership. Over the past three years we have tried to lead by example by building an executive team which is gender balanced. We have doubled the staffing and resources for our gender programs in the midst of severe resource constraints, which has strengthened our activities in a number of focus areas.

I am sure you will remember a hallmark of this effort, when together we celebrated the 40^th anniversary of ECA one year ago with a major international conference focused on the role of Africa’s women in the social and economic development. The event, brought the issue of gender to the mainstream of Africa’s development agenda, by evaluating strategies for removing the constraints imposed on women, as a means of achieving poverty reduction and sustainable growth in the long term. We still have a lot of follow-up from that outstanding event.

Third, I want to underscore work to strengthen Africa’s capital markets. We see capital market as of special relevance in helping to raise the level of domestic savings, attract foreign private investment, as well as helping to stem and reverse capital flight. ECA organized in June 1996, in Accra, Ghana, a major conference on "Reviving Private Sector Partnerships for Growth and Investment", out of which the African Capital Markets Forum was born. It serves as a clearing-house for the exchange of views, and provides training and other services needed to build and strengthen the capacity of capital markets in Africa.

I also want to touch upon a few other ECA programs. One is our work with civil society. We probably have as much, if not more focus on fostering civil society, as any institution on the continent. In 1997 we strengthened that focus by establishing the African Centre for Civil Society (ACCS), to help Africa’s civil society organizations to promote broad-based stakeholders’ participation in the development process. Our work with civil society is but one effort among many to strengthen governance on the continent.

Mr. Chairman,

As you know, we continue to emphasize the promotion of regional economic integration as a fundamental building block of a modern Africa. We do this through cooperating with our sister regional organizations in implementing the Abuja Treaty establishing the African Economic Community, which remains the goal for integration. To reach that goal we must assure strong subregional organizations. ECA’s Subregional Development Centres (SRDCs) were strengthened to provide technical support to the Regional Economic Communities, while strengthening ECA’s outreach to the various subregions. Particular emphasis was also laid on Africa’s position in world trade through analysis of the implications of the post-Uruguay- Round economic and trading arrangements on the region’s development. In support of integrated transport and communications systems, ECA reviewed achievements of the second United Nations Transport and Communications Decade in Africa (UNTACDA II), and organized the eleventh meeting of the Conference of African Ministers of Transport and Communications in Cairo, Egypt in November 1997. Additionally, on top of the UN Regular Programme of Technical Assistance, ECA assisted member States in the implementation of the UN system-wide Special Initiative on Africa (UN-SIA) in most of its priority areas.

Our proposed programme of work and priorities for the biennium 2000-2001, which you will be reviewing, aims to assist member States to meet many of their key challenges, by building upon the Commission’s accomplishments over the past four years. Now that we have taken a number of steps to enhance our capacities, and we have program priorities in place, we will be far more of a results-oriented institution in the coming biennium.

For enhanced programme delivery and impact, the work programme for 2000-2001 has built-in mechanisms--in the form of stronger links between desired results and resources--for member States and programme managers, to monitor and determine its implementation, effectiveness, and relevance. The work of the Commission will henceforth be measured by what the programmes actually accomplish and the impact they have on the member States, with emphasis on both accountability and responsibility, which reflects the Secretary General’s emphasis on "results-based planning and budgeting."

Mr. Chairman,

In line with these modalities, the work programme will continue to involve fewer but improved reports; fewer but more productive meetings; enhanced networking and partnership with other regional and international organizations, more technical support to member States, periodic surveys to measure client satisfaction, and enhanced media and communications outreach to creatively address Africa’s policy problems.

Mr. Chairman,

The need for enhanced collaboration and coordination is particularly compelling in Africa, where the activities of UN agencies have witnessed significant expansion at the national and regional levels in the past decade and half.

Hence, the first meeting of the Ministerial follow-up Committee of the Conference of Ministers, requested a report on coordination and collaboration among UN agencies at the regional and subregional levels in Africa, which is also before you. The report finds that the work of UN agencies at the regional level has been organized around three types of programmes, namely: The system-wide programmes and initiatives adopted by the United Nations to support Africa’s economic and social development; the regionally agreed programmes adopted by African member States themselves, which have been endorsed by the United Nations; and collaborations/partnerships arrangements developed as pragmatic responses to the specific needs of African countries.

The report highlights several important conclusions. The first is that the UN Inter-Agency Task Force established for UN-NADAF, and more recently the UN system-wide Special Initiative for African, have been helpful in building, facilitating and mobilizing inter-agency team effort for implementing various programmes and initiatives; secondly, there is a plethora of coordinating mechanisms developed around specific regional programmes, and thirdly, that the thematic programmes represent an important framework for collaboration among UN agencies. The fourth conclusion is that there is a virtual absence of mechanisms for coordination at the subregional level in Africa; and many agencies are individually developing closer links with the subregional intergovernmental organizations. Finally, the report finds that the decentralization of activities by various agencies to the subregional level in Africa is yet to induce the much hoped for improved coordination among the agencies.

The need to streamline these mechanisms is widely recognized by the agencies as well as member States, as expressed in the first annual regional coordination meeting of the United Nations System in Africa, held in Nairobi, Kenya in March 1999. The meeting, which was chaired by the UN Deputy Secretary-General underscored the need for enhanced coordination and collaboration, at the country, regional and subregional levels, as a way of avoiding duplication, minimizing overlap, and reinforcing synergies, thus increasing the impact of their collective effort. Noting the proliferation of programmes and initiatives, the meeting endorsed the UN system-wide Special Initiative on Africa (SIA) as a provisional mechanism for coordination of the UN system’s work in Africa. To this end, the Initiative is to be strengthened and modified to serve as the mechanism for regional coordination among UN agencies in Africa.

Towards more concerted action, as we enter the next millennium, ECA also hopes to use the Commission’s convening power to foster dialogue and consensus on key issues on Africa’s development agenda to achieve greater coherence and impact for UN activities, and those of other stakeholders in Africa’s development.

Mr. Chairman

Distinguished Delegates

As in previous years, the issue of rationalizing the 30 ECA-sponsored institutions is on the agenda of this year’s Joint Conference of Ministers. The 1997 Conference of Ministers requested me to take the necessary steps to rationalize these institutions and report thereon. You have before you a progress report on the harmonization and rationalization of these institutions, which details the activities that ECA has undertaken since 1997. The report on the subsidiary bodies of the Commission is also submitted for your discussion.

Mr. Chairman,

Distinguished Delegates,

In closing, I would like to thank you for allowing me to share with you these ideas and plans. Your in-depth discussion of the issues on the agenda at this meeting is a major service to us for which we are grateful.

Thank you for your attention. You have our every good wish for successful deliberations.