G8 MUST MOVE TO REVERSE THE SLIDE IN AID TO AFRICA - AMOAKO

Addis Ababa, 17 December 2001 (ECA) - The G8 group of developed countries need to develop a holistic response that can reverse the slide in aid to Africa, Economic Commission for Africa Executive Secretary K.Y. Amoako said today.

Speaking to an audience that included British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Secretary for International Development Claire Short and other leading UK policymakers, Mr. Amoako said that collectively the G-8's record in development assistance to Africa in the past decade had been less than impressive.

Mr. Amoako's address, titled "Fulfilling Africa's Promise", was the latest in a series of lectures launched to mark the new Millennium and hosted by the Prime Minister and Mrs. Blair. The Millennium Lectures are delivered in Downing Street to an audience of specialists and opinion formers, but they are intended to spark debate much further afield. This is the first Millennium Lecture devoted to Africa.

Mr. Amoako told the audience that overall aid to Africa has declined from $19 billion a year at the beginning of the 1990s to $12 billion today, a per capita drop of 40%. In the same period, Africa's share of global aid had dropped from 37% to 27% at a time when the quality of Africa's development had improved. "Shouldn't better performance be better recognized?" he asked.

In the context of the G8's response to the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), and in anticipation of the next G8 Summit in Canada in 2002, Mr. Amoako called on the Group to come up with a proposal for support that contained specific, time-bound deliverables, towards three desirable ends: achieving the International Development Goals, accelerating the process of rationalization, and fostering peace and reconstruction.

In his address, the ECA Executive Secretary talked about a paradigm shift in Africa's relations with its international development partners, which had emerged from new thinking by many of Africa's leaders, from ideas of civil society organizations, and from ECA's work. All the ideas, he said, were crystallized in the NEPAD.

Among key elements of the new paradigm, Mr. Amoako cited:

• African leadership and ownership of its policies and programmes, requiring good governance, a capable state with effective institutions, sound economic management and the participation of all sectors of society;

• A transformed development partnership, manifested by a joint commitment to commonly agreed development goals, and mutual accountability in progress towards these goals - moving away from the past donor-imposed conditionalities and towards self-monitoring and peer review among Africans;

• Long-term predictable partnerships underpinned by guaranteed long-term, timely, stable and high quality resource flows to countries that have a clear commitment to these shared goals; and

• Enhanced partnership with countries that will be the forerunners of Africa's transition from high aid dependency to a more robust development path led by the private sector, countries that can "become beacons of excellence, models for their neighbours to emulate, and engines of regional economic growth";

There were "strong moral reasons" as well as "compelling reasons of common interest" for Africa's international development partners to buy into the new paradigm, stressed Mr. Amoako.

Resource mobilization was key, particularly on the domestic front, to financing Africa's development. "We know the levels of resources needed to make the difference in reducing poverty," said Mr. Amoako. "But most major donors have failed to meet the goal of 0.7% of GNP for aid. And the overall level is now just 0.22%, the lowest since the Marshall Plan of the 1940s. Gordon Brown's appeal for doubling aid -- from 50 billion dollars to 100 billion dollars -- is well justified, towards meeting the target of 0.7% GNP. I hope that we can accelerate this with clear benchmarks for progress in the next five years."

Mr. Amoako stressed that there was also a need for the 2002 UN Financing for Development Conference to address the financing problems of Africa's most indebted countries, and made a number of proposals in this regard:

• For countries emerging from conflict or past misrule, consideration should be given to a programme to provide debt relief on achievable terms for three years;

• A way could be found to marry debt relief and funding African peacekeeping;

• A moratorium could be allowed of one or two years for countries vulnerable to commodity price fluctuations when their income falls below a certain level;

• A "pot of gold" could be provided at the end of the HIPC rainbow in expanded relief -- or forgiveness -- at the end of five years of good performance.

• A certain percentage of debt payments could be redirected to the fight against HIV/AIDS.

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For more information or for the full text of Mr. Amoako's address, please contact Peter da Costa on Tel: +44-7880-634-392, E-mail pdacosta@uneca.org. The text can also be downloaded from the 'What's New' Section of the ECA Web site, at www.uneca.org

Issued by the ECA Communication Team
Economic Commission for Africa
P.O. Box 3001
Addis Ababa
Ethiopia
Tel: +251-1-51 58 26
Fax: +251-1-51 03 65
E-mail: ecainfo@uneca.org