Thirty-third Session of the Commission/Twenty-fourth Meeting of the Conference of Ministers/ Seventh Conference of African Ministers of Finance
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 6-8 May 1999

Addis Ababa, 30 April 1999 (ECA) - Ministers of Planning and Finance from 53 African countries meet at the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) next week to deliberate over the key challenges of financing African development as the continent heads for the new millennium.

The Ministers will be among some 500 participants from the public, private, inter-governmental and bilateral partner sectors in the Joint Conference of African Ministers of Finance and Ministers of Economic Development and Planning, to take place from 6 - 8 May 1999. This year's conference, under the theme "The Challenges of Financing African Development", combines two biannual major ECA gatherings -- the 24th meeting of the Conference of Ministers, and the Seventh Session of the Conference of African Ministers of Finance.

The Conference is taking place against the backdrop of a number of important developments that pose a serious challenge to financing Africa's economic and social development and thereby alleviating poverty on the continent. These include the impact on Africa of the recent global financial crisis, which started with the East Asian financial crisis in mid-1997; theimplications for the continent of declining official development assistance to Africa, in the wake of budgetary constraints in donor countries and competing demands for aid from other regions; and the continuing high levels of external debt service burdens for many of these countries.

The key issues up for review are detailed in the Conference Theme Paper, which is available on the ECA Website (see below for address) or by e-mail on request. The Theme Paper breaks down the issues as follows:

- Official Development Assistance (ODA);

            - Other sources of external finance;

            - Capital Flight;

            - Domestic Resource Mobilization; and

            - Africa's External Debt; and the Impact, Lessons and Policy Implications for Africa of the East African Crisis.

The Conference aims to contribute towards clarifying options in key areas of national policy, and to lead to collective regional and subregional follow-up plans towards agreed objectives. In particular, the Ministers will look at how a common regional approach can be developed for fostering African ownership of the development agenda and the process for buildingconsensus towards that agenda.

A major expected outcome of the Conference is a common African position on resolving the continent's debt problem, which will be taken to subsequent international and multilateral fora. In 1997, the ECA Conference of African Ministers of Finance conducted a landmark debate on the Highly Indebted Poor Countries' (HIPC) initiative, which remains the only major avenue for reduction of the debt burden on the table.

The 1997 Conference concluded that the terms of HIPC were too restrictive, and called for the initiative to be revisited. Since then, subsequent forums have taken up the issue of making HIPC more flexible by revising the conditions for eligibility and liberalizing the terms under which relief is obtained. Next week's Conference will address specific provisions that would enable as many countries as possible to receive deep debt relief quickly and comprehensively, including debt cancellation.

The format of the Conference has been designed in a way to ensure maximum dialogue and exchange of views among Ministers, Central Bank Governors, and eminent persons from Africa with their development partners. Accordingly,the Conference has been organized around two panel discussions featuring senior officials and key policy makers.

The first panel on "Policy Reforms and Aid Effectiveness" will feature: Ms. Eveline Herfkins, Minister for Development Cooperation of the Netherlands, Professor Paul Collier, Director of the Development Research Group, the World Bank, and Ms. Carol Lancaster, a former Deputy Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development who has just published "Aid to Africa: So Much to Do, So Little Done". The panel will be moderated by Ms. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former Assistant Administrator for Africa of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The second panel, a "Review of the African Debt Situation and Domestic Resource Mobilization in Africa", will be moderated by Mr. Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, Chairman of the Global Coalition for Africa. It will feature: Mr. Rubens Ricupero, Director-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Mr. Ernesto Hernandez-Cata, Associate Director of the Africa Department, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and Mr. Axelvan Trotsenburg, Advisor to the World Bank President on the HIPC initiative.

             In advance of the Conference, experts today began a four-day meeting of the Technical Preparatory Committee of the Whole (TEPCOW). Addressing the meeting, ECA Executive Secretary Mr. K.Y. Amoako noted that in order to meetthe UN target of reducing poverty by half by the year 2015, Africa needed 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 1995-1998.

"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," said Mr. Amoako, adding: "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 theprospect of shrinking official development assistance."

Urging that African countries step up their effort to mobilize domestic resources for sustainable development and poverty reduction through a range of measures which would strengthen Africa's transition from public sector led development to private sector-driven partnership, the ECA Executive Secretary noted: "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."

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A list of documents available on the ECA Website is being sent in a separate e-mail message.

The ECA Website is regularly updated with statements and other relevant documents from the Conference. You can visit the site at http://www.un.org/depts/eca.

For more information, please contact:

Peter K.A. da Costa

Senior Communication Adviser

Economic Commission for Africa (ECA)

United Nations

P.O. Box 3001 (official) or 3005 (personal)

Addis Ababa

Ethiopia

Tel: +251-1-51 58 26

Fax: +251-1-51 03 65

E-Mail:     dacosta@un.org or  dacosta@igc.apc.org

Web:        http://www.un.org/depts/eca