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Africa Better: Strategic Directions for the Economic Commission for Africa
TABLE OF CONTENTSExecutive Summary
PREFACE
In its process of renewal, ECA requires a clear strategic framework on which to base its future actions. This paper is the funnel between a number of very important exercises that have led to this point; once the framework is established it will lead to many more actions, including the defining of the 1998-2001 Medium-Term Plan of the Commission, its programme and decisions on organisational restructuring. This paper has been discussed by an interdivisional advisory committee within ECA and has been reviewed by 40 high-level African experts drawn from government, the private sector, academia and civil society, as well as the Bureau of the Commission. The final version of this paper will be discussed with potential international partners and presented to member states at the 31st session of the Commission to be held in May 1996. The paper consists of the following sections:
Africa Today and Tomorrow
It is also a continent filled with dynamism, a rich mosaic of diversity whose development potential has still to be harnessed, where reforms are improving governance and economic performance in more and more countries, where civil society is burgeoning and women becoming more prominent in development and government. Building on the positive trends means having a vision of where Africa is headed, being aware of changes: the critical nexus of food security, population and the environment, the explosion of world trade, and the information revolution, through which Africa can leapfrog ahead, or be pushed aside. Taking these as challenges and opportunities, Africa can achieve a willed future in the span of one generation which has largely eliminated absolute poverty. And the Economic Commission for Africa will help African governments to adopt the right policies to seize these opportunities. Impetus for renewalFounded by the UN's Economic and Social Council in 1958, ECA's roles are to build African institutions, articulate plans and strategies, advocate policies and provide technical cooperation. It has a record of achievements C setting up the African Development Bank, helping to found subregional economic groupings such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Preferential Trade Area (PTA), and articulating major plans of action. But ECA needs to reorganise and reform, in response to changes in Africa, to a series of critical studies about its own operations, and C as part of the broader stream of UN crisis and reform C to be more cost effective, called upon as it is, to play a more central part than ever in initiatives for African development. So ECA has gone through months of intense self-reflection, studies, consultation and planning to reorganise and renew its work. ECA's plans for sharpening its focus, strengthening partnerships and increasing its impact are charted in this document, which is submitted to the 1996 ECA Conference of Ministers as the high point of its renewal process. The strategic narrowing of ECA's agenda is based on clear priorities and on its comparative advantages: its regional focus, its commitment as an organisation in and of Africa; in analysing regional issues, fostering regional cooperation, identifying role models, comparing and harmonising policies, compiling and networking development information and data. The reforms at ECA are guided by the principles of excellence, cost-effectiveness and effective partnerships. Excellence demands that ECA be a place for integrative thinking, for a wider view of Africa's potential, acquainting leaders with best practices in Africa. The new focus promotes synergy, responds to new priorities and will strengthen monitoring and evaluation. Its partnerships are with the OAU, ADB and subregional organisations, and with Africa's growing intellectual community. ECA will be a major market for African intellectual contributions to development, shifting emphasis from in-house production towards intellectual networking, particularly in Africa. Policy prioritiesIn the range of policy priorities, reducing poverty is the ovearching goal. Successful strategies are in promoting labour-demanding growth, investing in education and health, and safety nets for the poor. Good governance is important to giving space for the private sector as an engine of economic growth, and to civil society as a force for popular participation and democracy. Empowering women socially and economically, through education, legal rights, access to credit, and strengthening the informal sector is the most direct way to invigorate African communities, where women are the key producers and distributors, and where the feminisation of poverty is a symbol and a cause of the African development malaise. Another policy priority is overcoming structural problems, such as distorted macroeconomies, inadequate capital markets, poor infrastructure, low skills base and regulations which discourage investment. The right policies and investments to promote regional economic cooperation are central to Africa economic growth, to free the movement of goods, services, capital and people. Most urgent are policies coordinated to deal with the dangerous triangle of growing population, diminishing food production and degrading environment. ECA draws inspiration in the proposed focus of its future programmes from the initiative of the OAU Council of Ministers in March 1995, entitled Relaunching Africa's Economic and Social Development: the Cairo Agenda for Action, which was adopted by the June 1995 Summit of the African Heads of States and Governments in Addis Ababa. This is the most recent of policy documents which identified these priorities, and which reaffirmed Africa's primary responsibility for its own development. The future programmesThe five programme directions on
which ECA's work will focus over the next six years to 2001 are:
These programme directions differ markedly from the existing orientation, and they focus much more sharply, but there will be continuity over this period, to complete those activities already mandated. The two themes cutting across all five new programme areas are gender C enhancing women's participation in economic development C and capacity building. Gender will be mainstreamed in all ECA's in-house activities and in all its programme work, recognising women as a major force for sustainable development, and with renewed mandates, globally from Beijing, and regionally from the Kampala Action Plan. On the second theme, ECA's new Framework Agenda for Building and Utilising Critical Capacities in Africa will be a reference for coordinating UN activities in this area, which has been a major missing link in Africa's development. Exploiting its comparative advantage, ECA will act as a think tank on socioeconomic development, and a clearing house for best practices. With other institutions such as World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and African research networks working on short to medium term economic issues, ECA will focus on longer term growth and sustainability issues. At the same time, ECA will set up advisory services to provide support to member states in formulating their short and medium term programmes, in the context of strengthening African governments' positions in dialogue with the Bretton Woods institutions: IMF and World Bank. ECA will seek ways, in cooperation with UN Resident Coordinators, to bolster African governments' capabilities in presentations to Roundtables, Consultative Group (CG) meetings, and in debt rescheduling exercises; and in general, in formulating economic reform programmes and Country Strategy Notes. In the first programme area, facilitating social and economic policy analysis, ECA will use partnerships and networking to draw upon the work of other development actors, be a catalyst to national development efforts, emphasising its role as an innovator and generator of regional strategies. It will focus on multicountry strategies and address issues of regional dimension, keep a watching brief on key policy areas, create study groups and expert roundtables, for example a debt roundtable, or a finance roundtable, looking at ways to tap the African diaspora. Economic policy analysis will focus on macro and international economics issues, adjustment programmes, inflation, regional integration and liberalising financial markets. ECA will help African countries to articulate common positions in international negotiations, to get Africa out of the debt doldrums, and to cope with post Uruguay Round trade issues, limiting damage but also seizing the advantages of globalisation. Social policy analysis will focus on three issues: improving the social situation of women, furthering higher education and monitoring and analysis of poverty. ECA will continue to monitor the progress of a range of international initiatives, from the UN New Agenda for Development in Africa (UN-NADAF) to the latest ten-year, UN System-wide Special Initiative on Africa, assessing how such initiatives can be improved, and whether any more are needed. The second programme area, ensuring food security and sustainable development, means focusing on the link between food security, population and the environment, known as the nexus. No cluster of issues has so eluded public policy in Africa. Survival and quality of development are threatened by the current and projected grave imbalance of food-environment-population. Population growth is at the centre of the nexus C it is outpacing growth in general. Food security demands have become a critical issue. Environmental limits have been reached in numerous areas. Water is increasingly a problematic part of the nexus equation, with shortages increasing competition for water, and threatening quality. ECA will concentrate on six issues: enhancing national capacity to manage the nexus issues, strengthening population policies, increasing water supply for food production, supporting regional efforts to enhance food security, furthering the advancement of women and keeping an overview of science and technology developments, particularly relating to nexus issues. ECA actions will include: organising workshops to train trainers in analysis of the nexus issues; convening meetings of riparian countries to foster intercountry cooperation in water sharing through policy dialogue; helping regional and subregional organisations to design and implement measures to harmonise national food security programmes; and organising executive seminars to highlight ways in which improved science and technology policies can better address the nexus issues. The next programme area, strengthening development management, means working to develop an efficient public sector, a robust private sector and enhanced popular participation through civil society. ECA will address ways to enhance their individual and interlinked roles. In public sector management, ECA will promote accountability through dissemination of best practices, it will analyse and foster civil service reform, and it will promote decentralisation and the strengthening of local government. In private sector development, ECA will assist governments to reform the regulatory frameworks to improve market functioning, and promote dialogue between government and business. It will take part in plans to foster microcredit, to strengthen the informal sector and microenterprises. It will organise meetings of member states to promote regional cooperation in industry. With the other UN regional commissions, ECA will organise investment roundtables bringing together business people from Asia and Africa, and promote African business contacts with Latin America. ECA will continue to promote the development of capital markets, helping to provide technical assistance to set up and train managers for capital markets. ECA will continue and strengthen its active role in promoting civil society for development, within the growing collaboration between NGOs and the UN. ECA will establish a centre on NGOs and civil society organisations to foster this sector, and continue organising dialogue between civil society actors and governments. Harnessing information for development is a programme area central to ECA's work, and one in which it is already taking a lead in promoting electronic dissemination in Africa. ECA will focus on development information systems, and on statistical development. The overall goal is to expedite the information revolution in Africa. ECA is serving as a catalyst to promote Africa's connectivity to the Information Superhighway. ECA is already promoting dialogue with member states to liberalise telecommunications policy and computer imports, to permit the growth of the "infostructure". ECA will provide technical assistance to organise Africa's development information for dissemination on the Internet; and ECA is the only institution working on development of African information on CD-ROMs. ECA is creating a World Wide Web/Gopher server to facilitate connection with its clients. ECA will make all the resources of the ECA Library accessible to Africa's academic community, policymakers and research institutions through electronic connectivity, using these media. A priority issue is the rehabilitation of the Africa Statistical System, as national capacities have seriously deteriorated in the past 15 years. ECA has been assigned a major role in assisting member states to implement the Addis Ababa Plan of Action for Statistical Development. There is no regional database in Africa that carries comprehensive data. ECA will aim to improve its own database to serve as a regional data services centre. No such centre exists in Africa at present. This will enable ECA also to serve as a regional household data service centre. Promoting regional cooperation and integration is a major mandate of ECA, at the centre of its work programme. It has helped member states to prepare for intra-African linkages, and to establish or strengthen subregional organisations. ECA will make the economic case for integration in its policy papers, involving the private sector, civil society and professional groups. The Abuja Treaty is a major impetus for ECA's work alongside the OAU and ADB, its joint secretariat partners. ECA will concentrate its activities on developing cross-border trade liberalisation, transport and communications and energy and minerals, harmonising economic and monetary policies and promoting regional convergence. These tasks revolve around providing overall support for subregional organisations, in rationalising their activities. ECA's Multinational Programming and Operational Centres (MULPOCs) in each subregion will be the main vehicle for providing assistance. It is proposed to relocate them in the same place as the headquarters of the main subregional intergovernmental organisations. The MULPOCs role and staff composition will be tailored to respond to the subregion's needs. Modalities The ways ECA carries out its work and delivers its products will be guided by its desire for excellence, cost effectiveness, and partnerships. ECA like other UN regional commissions, is not a funding agency, but helps to spread development ideas from its own knowledge and that of others. Its modalities are broadly, two: advocacy and technical assistance. Its main vehicles for delivery over the years have been strategic policy documents, meetings of its policymaking organs, special conferences and published materials. At the apex of its policymaking organs is the principal legislative body, the Conference of Ministers responsible for Economic and Social Development and Planning. Then come other thematic ministerial conferences, the committees of experts, the five MULPOCs and other bodies. These organs adopt resolutions and declarations and articulate African positions on topical issues. ECA's published materials are reports to legislative organs, recurrent publications and non-recurrent, technical publications. Advisory services have been provided by ECA's substantive divisions and by the Multidisciplinary Regional Advisory Group (MRAG). ECA organises training, workshops, seminars and fellowships, and has field projects supported by funding partners. ECA has built a range of regional technical institutions, encompassing science and technology, banking and finance, minerals and remote sensing, planning and management. It has catalysed the formation of some professional associations, and of subregional groupings, which are the building blocks of the African Economic Community. Streamlining ECA's performance record is mixed, with a number of notable successes, and some failures. Its meetings and its publications need to be streamlined C reduced in number and upgraded in quality and impact. Existing modalities will be reformed in seven ways: reduced meetings, fewer and improved reports and revitalised publications, new networking arrangements, increased interactions with member states, more effective technical support, including use of country representatives, enhanced South-South cooperation, and strategic alliances with partners. Plans for all these actions are outlined below, in Chapter V, Section C. Partnerships Building effective partnerships is one of the three guiding principles of ECA renewal and reforms, alongside excellence and cost-effectiveness. ECA will pay particular attention to fostering lasting and fruitful partnerships. The search for long-term partners connotes a shift in strategy in which ECA is less the self-contained producer of work and far more the networker helping to put forward the best possible thinking. But ECA will not surrender its vision of what is best for Africa when entering partnerships with other influential multilateral development institutions. The main goal of strengthening cooperation in these ways is to respond better to the need of ECA's main clients, the governments and people of Africa. This final chapter outlines the way ECA will build or strengthen cooperation with the five main categories of partners. These are: African intergovernmental organisations, including OAU, ADB, ECOWAS, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) and the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS); agencies of the UN system; African universities and research institutions; bilateral donors; and civil society groups in Africa. Among the features of ECA's plans for new modalities and strengthened partnerships are enhanced networking, increased fellowships and exchanges in a range of fields, improved mechanisms for financial reporting on extra-budgetary resources, and joint programmes of top priority for member states and for donors. ECA is also keenly aware of the need to work in coordination with other agencies, particularly other UN organisations, recognising the comparative advantages of other agencies, and their mandates, mindful of the need for a continuing dialogue, to avoid duplication. This will be taken into account in ECA's work programming and in its day-to-day operations. Using its internal strengths, and drawing on the goodwill of its friends, ECA's leadership is determined to deliver on the promise of a renewed ECA. I. AFRICA: THE PRESENT AND THE FUTUREAfrica Today Africa's development is the classic glass half empty and half full. It is a continent both in development crisis and a continent filled with dynamism and potential. The half-empty side is almost too well known. Africa today represents the world's most serious development challenge, with its generally low economic growth, declining personal incomes, and declining investment ratios, while population growth rates are the highest in the world. Food production fails to meet current nutritional requirements. Civil strife continues to absorb vital financial resources and political energies in many countries. Key institutions are often weak and private markets imperfect. Government capacity is hampered by poor incentives for civil servants, the drag of public enterprises and, frequently, by weak public sector management. Africa C particularly sub-Saharan Africa C is highly dependent on concessional economic assistance. Foreign assistance supplies some 10 per cent of sub-Saharan Africa's GDP, almost half its foreign exchange receipts and most of its investment expenditure. More challenges are added by the fall in aid in real terms over the past two years, with bleak prospects for even sustained levels of aid in the future, and a still unresolved debt overhang that continues to drain resources. But Africa is not an undifferentiated mass of poor performing economies and strife-ridden societies. Through its five sub-regions spreads a rich mosaic of physical, ethnic, racial, religious and cultural diversity whose development potential is still to be recognised and harnessed. The continent is home to most of the world's Arab people, to about five million people of European descent and three million of Asian descent mostly in Eastern and Southern Africa, where the end of apartheid has unleashed a powerhouse for development. Africa's countries show many differences in political liberalising and economic reform, reflecting the transitions occurring in the continent. In the area of political liberalisation, they can be put into three broad categories: those countries where democracy and liberalisation are advanced or fairly well entrenched, those where the process is just beginning, and those where it has not started because of civil conflict or political stalemate. In economic reform, African countries again fit into three categories: those where reforms are advanced or where there is a tradition of sound macro-economic management, those where reforms are beginning, and those where reforms have stalled or have not started. There are also marked differences among Africa's subregions in degree of economic integration, infrastructure, energy consumption, susceptibility to environmental factors such as desertification and drought-proneness, population growth, and dependence on primary commodities for export earnings. These differences have defined the priorities for the various subregions. For example, Southern Africa is advanced in political and economic reform and in physical infrastructure, but has wide income differences, and the most urgent social development agenda. North Africa has the highest average per capita income, and is the most homogeneous subregion in culture and language, though its countries cooperate within the Arab League framework, not only within their subregional Arab Maghreb Union. The Central African Economic and Monetary Community is least advanced in economic reforms and in physical infrastructure, but the most advanced in monetary cooperation. The West African (ECOWAS) subregion is the most heterogenous, and has the largest number of the continent's least developed countries. ECA's programmes will be designed to respond to the variations in subregional priorities. The half-full side of Africa's development situation is reflected in a growing number of countries where economic and social reforms are improving governance and economic management and creating an enabling environment for mobilising resources, domestic and external. In recent years, annual growth rates in three countries have exceeded 8 per cent, eight countries had annual growth rates of 6 to 8 per cent, and a dozen countries have achieved 3 to 6 per cent average annual rates of growth of output. An important growth pole in Southern Africa is being built, with the end of apartheid and civil wars in the area. There is political liberalisation in many other places, leading to burgeoning civil society and more prominence for women in development and government. Africa Tomorrow These positive trends must be nurtured to enable Africa to lay a solid foundation for its future. To help lay that foundation it is essential to have a vision of where Africa is headed. There were two long-term perspective studies on Africa prepared in the 1980s, by ECA and by the World Bank. The 1983 study, entitled ECA and Africa's Development, 1983-2008: A Preliminary Perspective Study, explored two possible paths for Africa's future: the historical trends scenario, and a normative development scenario. It argued for action to translate the normative scenario into a "willed future" of prosperity and self-confidence. In this scenario, food security would have increased, energy balance improved, a level of self-sufficiency attained, and many monetary constraints to regional trade would have been overcome. The World Bank's 1989 study was entitled Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Development, A Long-Term Perspective Study. It indicated what it will take to have a "long-term vision [for Africa in the year 2020] that is both credible and energising". Much has changed since the reports were issued. The nexus of food security, population and environment appears to present an even more severe challenge than expected. International competition for aid and investment has intensified, increased liberalisation in world trade has created both shorter term challenges and longer term opportunities. Rapid advances in technology, while opening up development opportunities, are supplanting cheap labour as a consideration in foreign direct investment decisions. Continued reform in Africa may well accelerate economic and social progress. A growing consensus on action to prevent conflict could diminish upheavals in the continent in the years ahead. The world outside Africa today is one of explosive expansion in world trade and financial interdependence. It is not unreasonable to foresee such linkages growing rapidly within Africa and between Africa and the rest of the world. Technological advances and the information revolution reshaping the global economy offer all developing countries the chance technologically to "leapfrog" the economic development experience of successful countries. While there are many disadvantages for late starters in the development race C here, there are advantages: lower cost informatics technologies alone could revolutionise education, marketing and hundreds of other applications. Africa will not have to make costly investments in older technologies as did other regions, before investing in lower cost technologies. The learning curve for development really is positive and Africa should benefit from this. These trends make it possible to imagine an Africa a generation from now which has largely eliminated the worst forms of poverty, and to foresee a generally progressive era ahead. These positive outcomes are not unreasonable expectations. Without minimising the difficulties that lie ahead, it is possible for Africa to achieve a "willed future" leading to these ends. The keys to this future are sound macro-economic policies, efficient and equitable development of human and physical resources, full participation in development, open markets, and innovative and more effective international economic cooperation. ECA's aim of serving Africa better is fundamentally about positioning itself to assist African governments (and key international partners in Africa's development) to adopt and sustain desirable policies for this willed future. II. ECA: THE IMPETUS FOR RENEWAL AND REFORMThe Economic Commission for Africa was established by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC) in 1958. ECA is one of the UN's five regional commissions in the world. It reports to ECOSOC through the Conference of African Ministers Responsible for Economic and Social Development and Planning. ECA has a major set of programme and coordination mandates given to it by the UN General Assembly, by its Conference of Ministers, by meetings of Heads of States and Governments of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), and by numerous sectoral gatherings of African Ministers. ECA's chief mandate is to promote the economic and social development of its member states, foster intraregional integration, and promote international cooperation for Africa's development. ECA's roles may be summed up as: builder of African multinational institutions of development; articulator of plans and strategies; advocate of economic and social policy; and promoter and provider of technical cooperation for the development of African countries. In all these areas ECA has recorded significant achievements. It was instrumental in the establishment of the African Development Bank (ADB); it proposed or facilitated the establishment of such important subregional organisations as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Preferential Trade Area (PTA); it made major contributions to the articulation of landmark economic strategies such as the Lagos Plan of Action; it has made significant contributions in the debate on structural adjustment leading to a more human-centred approach; it provides technical assistance to African countries in many fields; and it has fostered major elements in civil society in Africa, such as NGOs, professional associations, and intellectual networks, on a scale unmatched by other institutions. Past accomplishments, however, offer no guarantee for future achievements. For ECA, the key to remaining relevant is to be at the forefront of strategic policy innovations in Africa's development. This requires organisational reform and renewal. The impetus for reform at ECA comes from three significant sources. First, African countries are going through multiple transitions, from state-dominated to free-market oriented economies, from autocracy to democracy, and, in some cases from conflict to rehabilitation and reconstruction. As member states change, ECA must change to respond to their needs. The second impulse for change comes from expressions of concern both within and outside ECA, about the agency's effectiveness in carrying out its broad mandate. These concerns are documented in many recent policy and management reviews of the Commission. In 1991, the then Acting Executive Secretary commissioned a special task force to review ECA's policy orientation, programmes and management capacity. The task force report concluded that serious problems of quality and efficiency were limiting the Commission's impact. It advocated that ECA set clearer priorities and focus more on achieving concrete results. A 1993 report of the Office of Inspections and Investigations, precursor of the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services, confirmed these and other problems, such as professional isolation, the need for skills upgrading and staff rotation, internal control weaknesses, lack of attention to analysis of intraregional trade in its work programme, and inadequate statistics on trade in Africa. As recently as August 1995, the UN's Joint Inspection Unit, in an evaluation report of the UN-New Agenda for the Development of Africa in the 1990s (UN-NADAF) commented that "practically all ECA partners consider that the time is now opportune for a practical reorientation of ECA's priorities and programmes as well as its working relations with African governments and the private sector, Africa's regional and subregional intergovernmental organisations, and other organisations of the UN System, especially the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), specialised technical agencies and the World Bank". The same report called for a "thorough review of ECA's original, essentially research and conference-oriented, mandate" and underscored that "ECA needs to re-engineer itself for the difficult African development challenge it has to tackle for the rest of the present decade and the more so into the next century [and do so through] a new more streamlined mandate and organisational strategy." The third factor impelling reform is the need to face squarely the increasing financial constraint that the UN has to operate under. In the case of ECA, this is reflected on the one hand, in shrinking resources. In the last 3-5 years major operating UN agencies have taken back to themselves execution of programmes they had previously entrusted to the regional commissions. This has drastically reduced ECA's sizeable extra-budgetary resources. Added to a less than optimal generation and marketing of proposals for extra-budgetary support, there was a 74 per cent drop in extra-budgetary support to ECA, from 1990/91 to 1994/95 (from $4929 million to an estimated $11 million). At the same time, there was an increase in the regular budgetary support from $65 million in the 1990/91 biennium to an estimated $74.02 million in 1994-95 (all figures are on an expenditure basis). Thus, while average total annual expenditures dropped by only 18 per cent (from $57 million to $42.5 million), operational flexibility and potential programme quality was drastically reduced by the loss of extra-budgetary resources. Reductions in the UN regular budget in the 1996-97 biennium will reinforce the trend of a tight financial situation. On the other hand, responsibilities are expanded. For example, the UN Secretary-General intends to shift more responsibility to the regional commissions. ECA is likely to play a larger role in helping UN agencies harmonise their approaches to development in Africa. It also has key roles to play in the UN System-wide Special Initiative on Africa, a $25 billion, decade-long initiative of unprecedented cooperation among UN agencies and the World Bank. The Initiative involves a commitment to put major resources behind universal basic education and health reforms throughout Africa as well as the launching of a dozen other programmes. ECA co-chairs this effort and it will have the lead in some of the programme components. Another area of expanded responsibilities will be the operation of a major conference centre with significant budgetary implications. The combination of shrinking resources and expanding responsibilities is unviable. This dilemma alone calls for changes in the Commission. Thus, current reform efforts are focused on refining programme directions and improving organisational processes. Several closely related measures and actions have been undertaken. There has been an intensive exercise in self-reflection among the staff with special attention on sharpening ECA's focus, strengthening partnership and increasing its impact. A number of expert studies have been done, on administrative and personnel processes and systems; planning, programming and budgeting system; technical capacity of the professional staff; and a communication, publication and dissemination strategy for the Commission. The reforms at ECA are guided by three principles: excellence, greater cost-effectiveness, and more effective partnerships. ECA's core mandate C to provide intellectual leadership and technical support to African countries C demands excellence in performance. Given the limits to staff size, the resource constraints facing the UN system, and the vast diversity of the Commission's mandate and functions, focusing our efforts is essential for increased quality. Renewal will mean narrowing ECA's agenda. Programmes will be justified on their ability to affect issues and development performance. In effect, ECA's focus must be strategic. The strategic narrowing of ECA's agenda will be grounded in an understanding of ECA's comparative advantage and a clear perception of priority tasks. ECA's regional focus C enhanced by the special knowledge and commitment of the large proportion of staff that are African C and its proximity to member states, are clear assets, particularly in helping governments to design or strengthen their macroeconomic policy frameworks, and for supporting capacity building and policy implementation. ECA also has a clear comparative advantage in analysis of regional issues, in fostering regional cooperation and integration, and in promoting consensus on a range of economic and social issues. An important illustration of the last function is provided by the regional meetings which ECA organised to articulate African Common Positions preparatory to the recent UN Global Conferences. In policy analysis, ECA should be able to exercise comparative advantage through identifying role models among development practices in Africa, in comparing policies within the continent, in attempting to bridge various data systems compiling data on African development, in helping member states coordinate and harmonise policies, and in analysing aspects of development governance in Africa. Excellence also demands that ECA should be seen as a place for integrative thinking, for a wider view of Africa's potentialities and problems, and a place which prepares (often with optimism) for the future. A new generation of forward-looking thought and action is taking charge in Africa. ECA can prepare these new leaders for opportunities and new challenges, and acquaint them them with best practices in Africa. Similarly, ECA is in an almost unique position to prepare the world for an advancing Africa. Excellence requires that ECA's vision be dynamic. It must have the courage to rethink what's important and to move into new challenges with speed. Cost effectiveness is a must. ECA resources will be focused on activities that have measurable impact on Africa's development problems. The proposed new focus for ECA's work has three main features: it promotes synergy among inter-related areas of its programme, it responds to new and agreed priorities in Africa's development, and it will strengthen monitoring and evaluation to enable better measurement of programme impact. Even with the best of focus and cost effectiveness, ECA will seek the path even the largest global organisations have taken, that of effective partnership with others. Some partnerships are absolutely necessary, such as with the other main regional organisations in Africa, the OAU and ADB, notably in regional trade and monetary affairs with OAU. Joint economies are likely if joint use is made of intergovernmental machinery which affects both organisations. The subregional organisations offer another set of compelling relationships given their key role in leading to the African Economic Community. ECA will seek to be the natural partner with Africa's impressive and growing intellectual community. It should be a major market for African intellectual contributions to development and it should more openly reflect these contributions in its work. Thus a shift is seen away from in-house production and more towards intellectual networking and stimulating the work of intellectual centres, particularly those in Africa. Making the case for Africa, ECA will be campaigning to bring the continent's intellectual resources to the fore. In some areas, ECA's partnership choices are not so obvious, and options will be identified and weighed with great care. In summary, in its programmes ECA will strive to be integrative, forward looking, excellent by being focused and having high impact, cost effective, dynamic, and in partnership with key powers and intellectual centres. III. POLICY PRIORITIES IN AFRICA'S DEVELOPMENTConsensus has emerged that poverty reduction should be the overarching goal of development. That consensus should inform and inspire development policy in Africa where, by many estimates, two out of five people live in poverty, and the number is increasing. Twenty two of the 25 countries in UNDP's category of "low human development countries" C which have low literacy, low income and low life expectancy C are in Africa; so too are 33 out of 47 on the UN's list of Least Developed Countries. In dealing with the challenges of poverty reduction, African countries can benefit from experience around the world of successful strategies to reduce poverty. These strategies consist of three main elements: labour-demanding growth, investment in education and health, and safety nets for the poor and vulnerable groups. Increasingly, a fourth element - good governance - is being added, because governments control a significant share of national resources and shape the policy environment for private economic agents and civil society. Labour-demanding growth strategies in Africa should enable the poor to increase their income from their main asset: labour - through increases in wages and work on self-owned farms, in micro enterprises or in the manufacturing sector. This means increasing opportunities for employment of the poor in agriculture, industry and the informal sector. Agriculture is the mainstay of most African economies and the locus of the majority of its poverty. Seventy per cent of Africa's poor live in rural areas and depend on agriculture. By year the 2020, Africa will have a labour force of more than 600 million workers who will need productive employment. These jobs are likely to be created in a myriad of small and micro commercial and industrial enterprises and in the informal sector, including agriculture. Governments will need to harness the potential of the informal sector to contribute to broad-based growth through improved incentives for this sector. Social investments - in education, health, nutrition and family planning - can reduce poverty by improving the productivity and health of all people, particularly the poor. Patterns of expenditure on social investment matter. Expenditure on basic education, and preventive and community health are more helpful to the poor. All poor people will not be able to benefit from programmes of social investment and labour-demanding growth. Some will be too vulnerable (the young or old), caught in disasters (refugees or internally displaced persons) or infirm. In such cases, safety nets will be required. This protection could take the forms of income transfer or food subsidies or public works for the unemployed. Women play a dominant role in agriculture and in the informal sector in Africa. Women in these sectors generally have little or no basic education and earn lower incomes than their counterparts in other sectors. There is a feminisation of poverty in Africa. Attending to the educational and health needs of girls and women will have enormous implications for the socioeconomic well being of society at large. So will legislative reforms that give women title to property, especially landed property, which is required as collateral for credit in the formal banking sector. Women's economic empowerment involves enhanced education, increased employment opportunities, access to credit and protection of their legal and human rights. Opportunities for income and employment generation as well as education come from the domestic and the international economy. The lack of appropriate framework to exploit opportunities in the international economy shows up in various forms. The macro economy may be distorted, especially in overvaluation of exchange rates, which deprives the producer (farmer or industrialist) from reaping much benefit from external trade. The institutions for accessing financial resources, for example capital markets, may be inadequate or absent. The physical infrastructure (transport, energy, telecommunications) may be inadequate and inefficient and the regulatory framework may be hostile, thus deterring foreign and domestic investment. Industrial exports may be weak, accentuating dependence on primary commodities that attract low export income. There may not be a properly-functioning educational system which supplies the required and appropriate number of skilled persons. Overcoming these structural impediments are key to Africa's accelerated development. Regional cooperation and integration also offers tremendous opportunities for economic growth, enabling African countries to overcome the constraints of small national markets, increasing intra-Africa trade and providing dynamism. And it will bring economies of scale in production. To realise these benefits, the right policies and investments are needed, including harmony in monetary, trade, investment and competition policy, as well as physical infrastructures to link national economic spaces and to free the movement of goods, services, capital and people. Equally important, the institutions that underpin regional cooperation must be credible in consistently applying agreed rules, and effective in managing inter-state differences when they inevitably occur. The Abuja Treaty on establishing the African Economic Community, now in force, contains provisions on these issues and spells out the stages for implementing them. OAU and ECA are responsible for making the arrangements a reality. Africa has severe environmental problems. Growing population is pushing the use of Africa's natural resources to the limits. Desertification is accelerating. Deforestation is increasing as more people rely on wood for fuel. Urbanisation is worsening pollution in the cities. Soil fertility is declining rapidly as farmers use the same land continuously C "mining soils to death." Recurring cycles of drought in parts of Africa threaten food and agricultural production. All these priorities have been identified in recent policy documents adopted by African governments and the global community. Africa's top political leadership has focused on national and regional responsibilities and how the international community can best support development as defined by Africa. The most recent and perhaps the most significant of these initiatives was the adoption by the OAU Council of Ministers in Cairo in March 1995 of Relaunching Africa's Economic and Social Development: The Cairo Agenda for Action. This initiative was subsequently adopted at the June 1995 Summit of the African Heads of State and Government in Addis Ababa. The Cairo Agenda reaffirmed African governments' and people's primary responsibility for their own development, and that priority must go to implementation of the strategies and programmes adopted at national, regional and continental levels. The Cairo Agenda identified a set of
priority issues that governments were committed to address. It also called for
international support of these issues to promote growth and economic recovery. The issues
are:
African heads of state and governments called upon their international partners to enhance the development prospects of the continent through: (i) understanding and appreciating Africa's development efforts (ii) mitigating the adverse consequences of the Uruguay Round, and (iii) taking measures to reduce the continent's debt burden. These themes were echoed at the July 1995 meeting of the ECOSOC High-Level Segment on Africa. This agenda will underpin any credible action to be undertaken by African countries and their supporters to stimulate economic and social development in Africa. The proposed focus of the future programmes of ECA draws inspiration and guidance from the Cairo Agenda. In sum, the basic challenge in Africa is to achieve broad-based development which reduces poverty by addressing the priorities identified, through the appropriate national policies and institutions, through fostering regional economic cooperation, and integrating Africa into the global economy. IV. PROPOSED FOCUS OF FUTURE PROGRAMMESDrawing on the policy priorities and
by intensive consultations within Africa, five programme directions are offered as the
foci of ECA's work over the next six years, 1996-200 These are:
The period 1996-2001 covers the last biennium (1996-1997) of the UN current medium term and the whole period of the next medium term 1998-2000. Because these programmes will be based on the commitment to improve ECA services and narrow its strategic agenda, their composition and focus is markedly different from the existing programme orientation. Still, given the need to complete the implementation of mandated ongoing activities in many areas, there is much evidence of continuity rather than abrupt change in the focus of some programmes. In all areas, however, there is a considerably sharpened focus to permit the evaluation of impact. ECA has two cross-cutting programme considerations that will influence the five new programme areas. These are promotion of women in Africa's development, and capacity building. Gender is to be a cross-cutting theme in all ECA's programme strategies. This is a matter of justice, and of choosing and ensuring more effective development strategies. The feminisation of poverty, and the wider recognition of women as a major force for sustainable development, offer but two of many compelling grounds for action. There are renewed mandates from Beijing to add to regional mandates including relatively new ones such as the Kampala Action Plan on Women and Peace. The UN's commitment to the advancement of women is well known. Translating this into action requires internalising gender considerations in ECA's programmes and staffing. It is exactly these challenges which make gender a cross-cutting issue at ECA. In this context, the African Centre for Women (ACW) at ECA will play two main roles: as a catalyst, promoting the mainstreaming of women in the programmes of the Commission, and as an implementer, monitoring the regionally agreed plans and strategies for advancement of women in Africa. Four priority areas will be addressed in the next five years: assisting member states in effective implementation of the Beijing Platform of Action; poverty eradication; promoting women's human and legal rights; and women's participation in decisionmaking, politics and the peace process. These will form the main focus of ECA's gender initiatives to be addressed as an integral part of various ECA programmes. With this work comes the hope that the Centre will attract visiting experts and political leaders on these topics, and that ECA will foster forums throughout Africa to give more attention to these issues. The second cross-cutting theme is capacity building. ECA is currently elaborating a Framework Agenda for Building and Utilising Critical Capacities in Africa. The Framework Agenda is intended to serve as a reference for strategies in the building of critical capacities by African countries, as well as their development partners and intergovernmental organisations, including agencies of the UN system in Africa. The Framework Agenda should be a useful tool for UN agencies in coordinating and harmonising activities in capacity building in Africa. The initiative to develop this Framework stemmed from the recognition that critical capacities have been a major missing link in Africa's development. Capacity building encompasses three components: human, institutional and infrastructural. The Framework Agenda will also spell out a long-term programme of technical assistance for member states in capacity building. Hence, several ECA activities in the programme areas listed below aim to support African countries in building their critical capacities. ECA's work in the five programme areas in the period ahead will be based on three main criteria: exploiting the comparative advantage of its regional mandate,working on long-term issues in Africa's development, and taking positions to help lead on important issues and to rally Africa together. Exploiting the advantage of its regional mandate requires ECA to act as a regional think tank on socioeconomic development. Because of its integrative role and ability to coalesce various viewpoints, ECA can serve as a clearing house for spreading best practices from a variety of experiences. To strengthen its comparative advantage, ECA will make a distinction between specific programme activities where it will lead, where it will complement others, and where it would be a catalyst in articulating initiatives and policy frameworks for concerted action. Second, in focusing on issues of long-term nature, more emphasis will be put on those which interface Africa with the rest of the world, on longer term growth and sustainability issues, and on social policy. This takes into account the fact that there are other institutions such as ADB, the Bretton Woods Institutions and African research networks that focus on short to medium term economic issues. At the same time, ECA will set up advisory services to provide support to member states in formulating their short and medium term programmes, in the context of strengthening African governments' positions in dialogue with the Bretton Woods institutions: IMF and World Bank. ECA will seek ways, in cooperation with UN Resident Coordinators, to bolster African governments' capabilities in presentations to Roundtables, Consultative Group (CG) meetings, and in debt rescheduling exercises; and in general, in formulating economic reform programmes and Country Strategy Notes. Third, in taking positions to lead on important issues and to rally Africa, the goal will be to reinforce ECA as a visible and credible articulator of regional positions with and for member states, and to focus on key issues that have an impact on Africa. Moreover, ECA will exploit synergies with other UN specialised programmes operating in the region and with other research, training and civic organisations involved in similar areas of analysis. Operationally, ECA will be mindful of resource constraints on carrying out its programmes and that real trade-offs do exist in relation to thematic coverage. ECA is keenly aware of the need to work in coordination with other agencies, particularly other UN organisations, recognising the comparative advantages of other agencies, and their mandates, mindful of the need for a continuing dialogue, to avoid duplication. This will be taken into account in ECA's work programming and in its day-to-day operations. The next sections provide a discussion on each of ECA's five core programme areas. A. FACILITATING ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL POLICY ANALYSIS ECA has a rich history to draw upon as a producer and articulator of analysis on fundamental issues and as a producer of development information, particularly where the level of analysis is beyond the country level. With refinements, there is ample room to continue and improve. Three areas of concentration will define this programme: economic policy analysis and research, social policy and development, and special issues and programmes. Africa requires a regional forum as well as a strong regional voice on its development issues. This can be a venue for in-depth discussion and sharing experiences on development, at both ministerial and expert levels, and can create consensus on key positions. In its policy analysis work, ECA can take on more of the character of a unique think tank, integrating issues to identify important relationships, launching major new concepts, gathering ideas from respected and new talents, and acting as a broker putting together interesting concepts and policymakers. In so doing, ECA will use partnerships and networking arrangements to draw upon the work of other actors in the region who are also engaged in analytical work. ECA's role as a think tank requires it to canvass existing capacity within and outside the region to provide intellectual support to member states for pursuing development initiatives. In all its work, ECA should be catalytic to national development efforts. Rather than draw up plans for member states, ECA should provide the intellectual stimulus and, where possible, technical assistance for the purpose. For ECA to be effective, its products will aim to be of high quality, relevant to current concerns, responsible to the needs of its clients, and accessible. This will ensure that its advice and direction is credible among its clients. ECA's role as an innovator and generator of regional strategies for development will be emphasised. ECA therefore proposes to focus on multi-country studies, addressing issues that are relevant to several countries or have subregional dimensions. Such studies will highlight the need for coordinated responses to tackle present or emerging common problems. ECA should also serve as a regional clearinghouse for spreading "best practices," by undertaking studies that identify and draw lessons from best practices in policies and actions within the region. Such studies will not only provide peer lessons but will help give a more balanced perspective to Africa's development experience. ECA's strategies for this function ought both to underpin the broad mandated areas of the Commission's work and to keep a watching brief on key policy areas where ECA is not able to field major staffs. In some areas, its policy analysis work might well be facilitated by creating roundtables of experts or study groups to meet from time to time to produce evolving series of policy advice. For example, ECA could create a Debt Roundtable, or it might have a Finance Roundtable to come up with creative new ways to finance development (for example, ways to tap the African diaspora). The general goal for this programme is to produce timely, appropriate and influential information and analysis, the product of an ECA that is alert to new issues and opportunities, serves the needs of client states, and supplies up-to-date, relevant information on development issues to interested people around Africa and abroad, which influences thinking on policy and research. Economic Policy Analysis and Research African countries need to develop economic and social policies relevant to and consistent with their national priorities. The programme will undertake research and policy analysis on the performance of the African economy, focusing on domestic and external sectors. This work will focus on macro and international economics issues. The macro component will address those macropolicy issues that represent major structural constraints on Africa's development, for example, persistent high inflation rates and fiscal and external viability. It should also provide intellectual assistance to member states in pursuing an orderly transition away from aid dependence. This includes recommending on conditions for mobilising domestic resources, diversifying external resources, and strengthening capacity for initiating and managing development programmes to reduce dependence on technical assistance. ECA will also focus on issues of promoting efficient macroeconomic management, adjustment programmes, inflation, fiscal issues, mobilisation and use of financial resources, regional integration, and liberalisation of financial markets. The international economic component will focus on four main areas that are crucial to Africa in the international economy: trade, debt, financial flows, and South-South cooperation. The main goal will be to strengthen African countries' capacity to deal with all the issues. ECA will also help them to articulate common positions in international negotiations. In the international economic area, apart from many operational responsibilities in trade and monetary affairs, ECA is also obliged to track major developments in Africa's international economic affairs. It must also propose, through sound policy analysis, new ways of confronting Africa's international economic challenges and opportunities. Nowhere is this more evident than in the stalemate in getting Africa out of the debt doldrums. This problem is complex given the variety of external debt sources involving Africa, as well as the long history of attempted solutions with each of the creditor sources. Similarly, Africa needs well-articulated proposals to cope with post-Uruguay Round trade issues, not only mitigating potential damage but also finding advantageous linkages with globalisation. ECA's annual economic assessment and report on Africa's economic performance will be continued, and sharpened for more impact. There will be a balance between analysis and data. Policymakers will be advised where trends are leading, on alternative economic policy approaches to accelerate good trends and on alternatives to avert bad economic trends. A central focus will be economic policies to reduce poverty. An important aim is that these economic analyses be considered authoritative. Social Policy and Development There is now much wider recognition that the true measure of economic development is in the social progress it generates. Indeed, the strategy that has proved effective in improving economic and social well-being consists of three elements: fostering growth that increases use of labour C the biggest asset of the poor, investment in education and health, and assistance to the poor. Safety nets take a variety of forms: cash transfers, targeted subsidies, public work schemes, severance pay, and retraining for laid-off public servants. ECA has many mandates in the social policy area and an obligation from recent UN summits and conferences to keep these policy concerns at the centre of its work. ECA has been an active partner in shaping an emerging consensus on the primacy of human and social development through a series of social development research and consensus-building exercises. Recent ECA activities in this area include helping Africa articulate a common position in 1994 on Human and Social Development in Africa for the Copenhagen World Summit on Social Development. ECA also launched a periodic overview of the human condition in Africa through the publication of the Human Development in Africa: 1995 Report. The UN System-wide Special Initiative on Africa adds extremely important UN emphasis on social development, including major basic education and health reform initiatives, for which the World Bank will lead the mobilisation over ten years of about US$25 billion in resources, in cooperation with partner UN agencies. ECA is co-chairing this effort and will take a lead in its coordination at the end of 1996. Thus ECA is well positioned to further work on social development issues within its own programmes and to influence others. ECA can also influence policy through the Standing Conference of Ministers Responsible for Human Development, which ECA serves as secretariat. It can strengthen planning for social development. It can monitor and report on social development, advocate educational and other social reforms, help assure women's full participation social development planning, and, with OAU, promote social cohesion and integration. ECA will focus on three issues: improving the social situation of women, furthering higher education, and monitoring and analysis of poverty in Africa. One common thread running through all three issues is the need for reliable data. 68. Improving the Socioeconomic Situation of Women. Female education, particularly for girls of school age at primary and secondary levels, is the single most important investment in improving the social situation of women and families. Education increases earning power and the impact of investments in health, nutrition, family planning, agriculture and industry. It also enhances women's participation in community activities. The main task here will be to help governments plan and carry out measures to improve the social situation of women by organising forums for dialogue between policymakers and community leaders, and through research and advisory services. Higher Education. Many actors within the UN System are working on aspects of education in Africa. The UN System-wide Special Initiative on Africa, for example, will entail a major expansion of primary education that is expected to bring about a demand-led expansion of secondary education. ECA will focus on higher education. Tertiary educational institutions in Africa, mainly the universities, are in severe crisis. They are underfunded, the quality of learning has deteriorated, and there is a huge outflow of skilled teachers to Africa's private sector and to foreign countries. Consequently, these institutions are not able to fulfil their main missions C to serve as centres of professional training for the economy, for research, and for teachers for all educational institutions. The conventional approach of handling these tasks through residential universities needs to be reviewed. The focus of ECA's work in this area will be to promote higher education reforms with special emphasis on increasing capacity to produce more scientists and engineers, who are vital to any modern economy. Training for women in science and technology will be emphasised. Given the huge resource outlays needed for training these professionals, information technology will be exploited for education in these fields. ECA's work in information technology to disseminate both its own information resources and those of other institutions will help to alleviate the shortages of instructional materials in the universities. Analysis and Monitoring of Poverty. African countries have committed themselves to taking policy measures towards reducing poverty, as part of an overall approach to advancing social development. A key challenge is to bring to financial and political authorities persuasive rationales for shifting domestic resources to social development and reducing poverty. ECA is well positioned to do this, perhaps in concert with others. ECA's activities in analysis and monitoring of poverty will help to reinforce actions of governments by indicating what is working and not working in the fight against poverty. A regional database on household surveys will generate useful data for the analysis and monitoring of poverty. This will include a regional household data archive/data service centre - or research facility - that will acquire, store and disseminate computer readable copies of household, community and other data sets, including population censuses, to promote the exchange of data and analytical experiences. ECA will work with other agencies to assist governments in strengthening their capacities for poverty assessment and monitoring at the national level. Through all this work, ECA will be able to identify areas where progress is being made and not being made. Much of this will be summarised in regular monitoring and reporting of human and social development in Africa, to draw policy and advocacy positions for ECA's member states and development partners, and the wider community. ECA will identify and monitor emerging regional and global developments that are significant to the economic and social development of member states and help them to prepare appropriate responses. This will include, for example, areas of employment (including concepts of sustainable livelihoods) and social cohesion (both major themes in the World Summit on Social Development) and human settlement along with other issues at the upcoming Habitat II conference. Though capacity for policy analysis is being built at regional and subregional levels to address these issues, there are still major gaps in some areas, notably in integrating cross-cutting themes of gender, poverty, and human development. ECA should fill these gaps. Special Issues and Programmes The pedigree of international initiatives dedicated to or relevant for Africa is impressive. These special programmes include the United Nations New Agenda for the Development of Africa in the 1990s (UN-NADAF), the Paris Declaration and Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) for the 1990s, and the Barbados Declaration and Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States (SIDS). The UN System-wide Special Initiative on Africa (SWSIA) has been added to the lineup this year. ECA has a special responsibility for monitoring and reporting to various legislative organs on implementation of these agreements. This programme area will consolidate the focus on how their implementation is proceeding. It will also strengthen analytical capacity to assess how such initiatives can be improved in the future, and whether any more are needed. 74. In its programme activities ECA will concentrate on issues of common interest to member states, leaving room for them to pursue those policy matters specific to their own situations. To enhance its visibility and impact, ECA should participate at Consultative Group and Paris Club meetings for a sample of countries, each chosen as representing a category within the range of countries appearing before these meetings. This will also enable ECA to gather experience to provide technical assistance to member states in the consultative process. B. ENSURING FOOD SECURITY AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT Africa is the only continent where food production per person has been declining over the past three decades. This dismal trend, and the high population growth rates have revived concern as to whether food production can keep pace with population growth. The gravity of the food problem is compounded by soil erosion and depletion of nutrients everywhere in Africa, thus linking food security with population and environmental sustainability. Such interrelationships are commonly called the "nexus." No cluster of issues has eluded effective public policy in Africa as much as those of the nexus. At stake here is no less than the very survival of a great many Africans and the quality of life for most Africans. This points to the need for a strong dialogue on these issues in each country. In consequence, the capacity of governments to manage the nexus issues needs to be strengthened. This approach recognises the reality that specialised agencies work separately on these issues (food production, water, health, population and the environment). ECA's special contributions will be in three areas: analysing interrelationships between the nexus issues and their implications for fundamental development strategies; focusing on public administration aspects of managing these issues (for example, how best to locate concerns on these issues in governance, and how to heighten their priority); and identifying how best to stimulate external support for tackling the issues. Population is clearly the great driving force on these issues. Even if all African countries begin to adopt more active population policies, population growth is not expected to decline significantly over the next 25 years from the present average of 2.8 per cent per annum. Survival and quality of development are under threat with the current and projected grave imbalance of food-environment-population. Population growth is the centre of the nexus. In fact population is outpacing growth in general, and sustainable food production in particular. The future size of Africa's population will be affected by economic and social service growth, political leadership on population issues, and provision of population planning services and related maternal health services. Food security demands have become a critical issue as production per capita has declined for the past few decades, while the low purchasing power of the poor has not enabled them to secure substitute supplies. Improving Africa's food security systems is an essential survival issue, encompassing production, storage and distribution, milling and marketing, purchasing power and nutrition. Environmental limits have been reached in numerous areas. There was a time in Africa's history when drought was a twice-a-century phenomenon. Now it is twice-a-decade. The environment, not war, is becoming the largest source of refugees in Africa. Africa is mining its thin soil, using up water supplies, becoming desertified and is deforesting at a rapid rate. For example, at the beginning of the century 40 per cent of Ethiopia was covered by forests. Now just 3 per cent is. The consequent loss of topsoil is enormous. Water is increasingly a problematic part of the nexus equation in many parts of Africa. Shortages occur in ten countries, and another ten are threatened. There is the potential for major destabilising actions if effective water-sharing agreements are not established for numerous water basins. Competition for water is also growing with the acceleration of urbanisation. Water quality is also a significant health problem. Thus Africa faces a nexus problem that will lead, if not checked, towards social, environmental, and financial breakdown. This is compounded by disputes about water which, if unresolved, could mean that in parts of Africa peace also will not be sustainable. So far there are no satisfactory solutions, particularly in the environmental and agricultural areas. And domestic commitments are uncertain among many African governments. Some African countries have been addressing parts of the nexus through sectoral strategies (such as population or environmental plans). But it is rare to find comprehensive actions on the required scale, or to find interconnections in the nexus being actively developed in policies and resource allocations. ECA can best concentrate on six issues: enhancing national capacities to manage the nexus issues, strengthening population policies, increasing water supply for food production, supporting regional efforts to enhance food security, furthering the advancement of women, and keeping an overview of science and technology developments, particularly as they relate to nexus issues. The overall goal against which progress should be measured is whether ECA can increase significantly the urgency and level of national efforts devoted to these nexus issues. Improving Capacities of Member States to Analyse and Manage the Policies Needed to Address the Nexus Issues. The goal is to ensure that there is locally-based analytical capacity for national policymaking and implementation in the interrelated areas of food security, population growth, and the environment. ECA will track how governments are doing in addressing the three nexus factors and the way they relate. ECA will gather leading government figures to review lessons learned in public administration of the nexus issues and in raising these issues high on the national agenda. ECA will organise workshops to train trainers in analysis of the nexus issues. Such workshops will feature the use of strategic planning and management tools. ECA will also advise member states on strategies and priorities to address these issues. Strengthening Population Policies. There is now wide consensus on population policy issues and on the linkages between population and development, thanks to the awareness generated by the regional and global conferences of the past two decades. In the Dakar/Ngor Declaration on population, family and sustainable development (1992), African governments for the first time adopted quantitative demographic targets to be reached by countries of the region between 2000-2010. These targets were in terms of reducing annual population growth rate and mortality rates (infant, child and maternal), and increasing life expectancy and contraceptive prevalence rates. The primary role for implementing these measures and actions rests with individual African governments. ECA can contribute by helping African states be mutually accountable for actions under these plans, by stimulating early action on population determinants, and by ensuring that population issues are given high-level political support through fostering political-level dialogues. ECA can also include population as a key factor in its own macroanalysis, and can propose more complete, mutually supporting and effective approaches for donor assistance in this area. In its population work, ECA will emphasise analysis and policy implementation. It will look for best practices in terms of how political and societal commitment is generated, how programmes are managed, and what constitutes successful interventions on population. Increasing Water Supply for Food Production. This is one of the key challenges in increasing food and agricultural production in Africa. To make water supplies for food production more reliable requires better management of on-farm water and the development and spread of feasible irrigation systems. There is also much scope for water sharing among riparian states in Africa, though some are caught in disputes at present. ECA can play an important role in increasing water for food production by helping the riparian states to establish mechanisms for settling disputes and agreeing on rules and regulations for sustainable and equitable management of resources. It can also strengthen arrangements for developing interstate lake and river basins in Africa. ECA will work to foster intercountry cooperation in water-sharing through policy dialogue and convening meetings of interested countries. Support to Regional Integration Efforts in Food Security. The goal will be to help regional and subregional organisations to design and implement measures to harmonise national food security programmes and encourage intraAfrican trade in agricultural products which enhance food security. To address these issues, ECA will reinforce partnerships and cooperation with the subregional intergovernmental organisations in Africa. Advancement of Women. African women play a critical role in the nexus issues of food security, population and environmental sustainability. By helping member states to design measures to increase educational opportunities for women and enhance their property rights and by advising on ways to give women access to credit services, ECA can strengthen their contribution to addressing the issues. Science and Technology for Development. Science and technology is a
cross-cutting issue in various areas of the nexus. Building an endogenous scientific and
technological capability has long been recognised as vital for Africa's development and it
is particularly germane in coping with the nexus issues. This recognition has inspired
many initiatives and actions by African countries, and by several regional and
international organisations. Those programmes have identified the main requirements for
development and application. Principal among them are development of human resources,
increased financial outlay, adoption of appropriate policies, establishment of
institutions, and strengthening of cooperation in the field among African countries and
between African countries and other regions of the world. There is also need for Africa to
develop regional standards that respond to their social needs, while striving to match
international product standards to enhance their global competitiveness. ECA has sponsored
the creation of many regional institutions devoted to development. Indeed, 13 out of 30
regional institutions for development affiliated to ECA are in the field of. These
institutions serve as major vehicles for regional cooperation in. But they suffer from
problems of under-funding and overlapping mandates, which must be overcome if these
institutions are to play a major role in development in the region. ECA will seek to
revitalise these institutions by intensifying the effort to rationalise them. The main
thrust of future work is proposed to be in three areas:
In due course, ECA would like to prepare periodic reports on development in Africa. C. STRENGTHENING DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT Effective management of development requires an efficient and competent public sector, a robust and properly functioning private sector, and the enhanced popular participation that is most often found in civil society organisations. These are critical elements in any agenda for accelerating Africa's development into the 21st century. Strengthening the managerial and institutional capacities of these sectors is key to enhancing their individual and interlinked roles in development. It is increasingly recognised that future growth and development in Africa rests with entrepreneurs and the private sector. The potential for entrepreneurship and private sector development is visible everywhere from the trading floors of new African stock exchanges, to the streets in all African countries. But the potential has yet to be fully exploited. It will require active policy support by the state for it to be fully realised. One key lesson of development management is that the institutional capacities of the state need to be strengthened and reoriented in a comprehensive and coherent manner in support of the development process. Also, there is strong consensus that African public services must be efficient, ethical, accountable and transparent. One of the most vibrant and promising developments in recent years in Africa has been the surge in political liberalisation. Strengthening democratic governance and popular participation in development are vital not only for entrenching democracy, but also for contributing to growth and development. Public Sector Management ECA's work in this area will centre around implementing the key public sector components of the Strategic Agenda for Development Management in Africa in the 1990s. This work will concentrate on three areas: accountability, civil service reform and decentralisation. Strengthening the Institutions of Accountability. The goal will be to promote concepts of ethics and accountability in African public services with a view to fostering a climate of higher expectations of performance and to better ensure that public officials - both elected and appointed - uphold and adhere to ethical standards of public service. ECA will assist in establishing or strengthening watchdog organisations, such as code of conduct bureaus, public complaints commissions, ombudsmen, public accounts committees, and parliamentary oversight committees. Ensuring that these institutions are endowed with the resources and independence to enable them perform their roles will be important. ECA's vehicle of assistance will be dissemination of best practices including provision of advisory services. Strengthening Civil Service Systems. A number of states seek ways to reorient their civil service towards an attitude of public service and a customer orientation. States seek help to install standards and indicators through strengthened civil service performance systems. There is currently no centre of information devoted to the experience of public sector reform in Africa. This would be useful to analyse and foster both the reform process itself and best practices within reforms. Promoting Decentralisation of Administrative Power. Decentralisation has long been recognised and advocated as a means of promoting socioeconomic development. Whether decentralisation takes the form of deconcentration or devolution, it increases opportunities for decisionmaking and delivery of services to citizens at the level of government nearest to them, notably the local government. This in turn enhances the sense of participation and ownership of policies and programmes. ECA's activities in this area will be to promote greater decentralisation and to strengthen the leadership and capacity of institutions of local governance. Promoting Private Sector Development ECA will undertake a focused approach in support of private sector development covering the environment for both small and large-scale enterprises. ECA will focus on three areas: enhancing an enabling environment for private sector development, strengthening the informal and micro enterprise sector, and promoting industrial development. We will also keep a watching brief on the development of financial markets. Enhancing an Enabling Environment for Private Sector Development. The thrust of work will be assisting governments to reform the regulatory frameworks essential for private sector operations, with special emphasis on policy measures to improve market functioning. This will be done by capacity building efforts and through promoting dialogue between the public and private sector. ECA has worked with a number of states on these issues and seeks to expand the coverage of this work, and to more systematically draw lessons learned from the experience of Africa as it fosters "an enabling environment." Another key way of promoting an enabling environment, as shown by a number of industrialising countries, is to ensure an open and transparent dialogue between government and business. In Africa, where state dominated economies are giving way to freer market orientations, fostering understanding between both sectors is a timely issue. ECA can help make known the role of consultative councils and can help foster their creation through publications and convening round tables. The African Federation of Women Entrepreneurs (AFWE), a network of national associations of business women and entrepreneurs established at the initiative of ECA, would play an important role in reflecting women's concerns in policy dialogues. Strengthening the Micro and Informal Enterprise Sector. Outside of agriculture, the micro and informal sector enterprises are the main sources of employment and income in most countries. Critical deficits in the informal sector thwart the potential of this important part of the for-profit sector to reduce poverty and increase development across societies. There is huge potential for microenterprise if there are appropriate supporting services, particularly credit. But an enabling environment and appropriate financial intermediaries are lacking. There is strong interest throughout the UN system, including ECA, in addressing this problem, but coordinated action is needed to plan a viable approach. As part of the Special Initiative on Africa ECA will likely join a planning exercise with a number of other agencies to foster microcredit in Africa in a big way. ECA's work in development management, fiscal policy and women in development should have a bearing on this. The key focus should be on policies to foster these enterprises and on the financial services they need. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can also be strengthened through more effective national associations and support structures, to set in motion programmes to improve the management capacity of SMEs, and to strengthen the links between higher education and research centres and these business communities. Promoting Industrial Development. Political leaders in Africa have agreed through the Second Industrial Development Decade for Africa (IDDA) and the Abuja Treaty that emphasis should be placed on industrial competitiveness, development of industrial manpower, private sector development, and regional cooperation. The role of government in all these areas will be fully recognised. ECA has been assigned some responsibilities under these programmes and under sponsored institutions. The goal will be to promote an industrial culture in member states for developing and sustaining entrepreneurial capabilities and to strengthen technical skills at the member states level so as to rapidly adjust to the demands of internationally accepted standards of quality for industrial products. ECA's assistance in support of these efforts will take the form of advocacy to induce policy change at national, subregional and regional levels. Efforts also will be made to assist the development of industrial manpower through national training programmes and to assess the viability and sustainability of selected ECA-sponsored organisations. Institutions with continuing justification need appropriate managerial and financial support which ECA should help secure. ECA also will endeavour to support the industrial activities of African subregional and regional economic communities by promoting member states' awareness of the importance of the Protocols of the Abuja Treaty on industrial cooperation. It will also help to organise training, workshops and expert group meetings to inform and educate member states on regional cooperation in industry, and workable policies to promote regional industrial activities. South-South cooperation is an important vehicle for strengthening private sector development, including industrial development. A major challenge in this area is to devise mechanisms that enable African countries to benefit from the experience of, but also attract investments from, other developing regions. For example, investment roundtables could be organised to bring together business people from Asia with investment resources and business people from Africa with investment proposals. Closely allied to this proposal is the need to promote greater contacts between business councils or chambers of commerce and industry in Africa and those in Latin America, for example. The UN's regional commissions in Asia/Pacific and Latin America have expressed interest in cooperating in trade and investment promotion programmes and other mechanisms of South-South cooperation. Promotion of Capital Markets. Organised capital and financial markets are growing rapidly in Africa. ECA has actively promoted the development of such markets. It has nurtured the establishment of an African Capital Markets Forum and served as the secretariat of its interim steering committee. ECA will act as a catalyst in the provision of technical assistance to African countries by facilitating the development of a critical mass of skilled professionals needed to establish and manage such markets. ECA might also establish networking arrangements with selected regulatory agencies and exchanges in developed and newly industrialised countries. Similarly, working relationships will be established with international organisations that are willing and able to impart modern techniques and technology needed to develop dynamic and efficient financial and capital markets in Africa. Promoting Popular Participation in Development ECA is well recognised for promoting the development contributions of civil society, especially through its work on the African Charter for Popular Participation in Development. This is consistent with a whole series of growing collaborations between NGOs and the UN, as most vividly seen in recent UN global conferences. There are still many tasks to be undertaken, both with governments (such as helping them make space for pluralistic forces in development), and with civil society actors, to upgrade their effectiveness (for example, helping them transit from advocacy to managers of development, fostering forums, and recognising civil society groups through partnerships and encouraging their interaction in ECA programmes). ECA is establishing a centre on NGOs/CSOs to better research and foster this dynamic sector of Africa's development. ECA will focus on enhancing the legitimacy and the capabilities of civil society. Enhancing Dialogue between Governments and Civil Society. In a number of countries, the value of pluralistic society is not well understood. Civil society organisations are not permitted to flourish. ECA proposes to continue a programme of organising dialogue between civil society actors and governments, to change disincentives to incentives for civil society groups to organise and be productive in development. Dialogue will be encouraged in the important area of helping to create more appropriate public policies and to help better explain those policies, once established. From this experience ECA will be in a position to comment periodically on the state of civil society in Africa. Strengthening the Capacities of Civil Society Organisations. Civil society organisations usually start as advocacy groups. Over time the roles of civil society in development broaden to take on wider functions. It is in the interest of states to see this transformation take place so that civil actors strengthen their efforts to provide social services, credit functions and enterprise creation. ECA can help foster networks of CSOs within and between countries. D. HARNESSING INFORMATION FOR DEVELOPMENT Information as a resource, a commodity with value that can be traded and exploited, is becoming as important for production as land and capital. As with other resources so with information: added value comes from processing, which increasingly is harnessed by technology. Information, including data, is a tool for development. Timely and reliable information and data are needed for economic policymaking in the public sector and for business decisions by private economic agents. Information technology, driven by the convergence of computers, telecommunications, satellites, and fibre optics, is crucial for the knowledge-based economy of the future. Rapidly declining costs of many information and communications technologies will revolutionise the prospects for numerous aspects of social and economic development. Applications of information technology are spreading in poor countries and producing many benefits. For example, information technology is increasing the scope and quality of distance learning by making it possible to share educational facilities including teachers, whose store of knowledge can be accessed via on-line facilities or CD-ROMs. Information technology is also reducing the time it takes to identify and exploit opportunities for trade, investment and finance. It shows that Africa can join and benefit from the information revolution, but to do so, Africa needs to develop the capacity to tap into the global system of information and knowledge, and adapt it to solve its problems. This requires a composite of measures. Structural constraints of weak or inadequate telecommunications system must be overcome. Continuing lack of a critical mass of trained professionals in computers, data management, science, engineering and business will constrain Africa's ability to adapt to the rapidly changing international economy and reap its benefits. Laws and regulations that impede the flow of information must be reformed. Institutional and policy impediments to diffusion and application of technology must be eliminated. Public policy has to address all these issues if the rewards of the information and technology-driven economy are to materialise. Enhancing Africa's capacity to access the global system of knowledge and information must be built upon a system of timely, reliable and easily accessible data at the national level. This means the creation or strengthening of the national databases. Much is already being done in the context of the Strategy for the implementation of the Addis Ababa Plan of Action for Statistical Development in Africa in the 1990s. Whether to develop the information infrastructure or statistical databases, African countries need as much help as they can get. Various organisations of the UN system including ECA are evolving initiatives or programmes in these areas. ECA will focus on two areas: development information systems and statistical development. The overall goal for this programme is to expedite the information revolution in Africa by helping to assure that this is a major focus of national attention and action and of international support. ECA plans to serve as a catalyst for promoting Africa's connectivity to the Information Superhighway. This effort will extend beyond government agencies to include universities, NGOs, economic operators and individuals. Development Information System ECA's commitment to fostering development of modern information systems was reflected in the establishment of the Pan-African Development Information System (PADIS) more than one and a half decades ago. With awareness growing about the importance of electronic connectivity and its many uses, ECA plans to reinforce its activities in this area by focusing on three issues: development of an African information structure, organisation of Africa's development information, and dissemination of African information. Information Infrastructure as Part of African Development. Information infrastructure includes human resources and basic facilities, equipment and service installations required for the growth and functioning of an information-based economy in the region. Seeking to achieve this objective will involve raising awareness about the importance of establishing an information infrastructure, and stimulating policy shifts in that direction. To accelerate this process, a High-Level Working Group on Information and Communication Technologies was established by the ECA Conference of Ministers at its 1995 session. This group has developed an Action Plan for building Africa's information infrastructure. ECA will assist in the implementation of the plan by giving advisory services and training to African governments, subregional and regional institutions on what needs to be done to develop the various components of the infrastructure, as well as disseminating standards for African information providers. ECA is already promoting dialogue with member states to address issues of regulatory and pricing policy, including taxes. ECA recognises that there are a number of initiatives by UN agencies as well as bilateral donors in the area of promoting African connectivity. We intend to build on those efforts through our activities. In this programme of work, the indicators of progress include the number of African countries which have liberalised policies permitting growth of infrastructure (liberalisation of computer imports, telecommunications), the number of African electronic communication nodes, the increasing numbers of people in Africa using electronic communication, and the number of Internet users from Africa. Organising Africa's Development Information. As more and more African countries achieve electronic connectivity, users will find that the vast majority of information available on Internet (and CD-ROM) comes from the advanced industrialised nations. Information on Africa and about African sources needs to be organised for dissemination on the Internet. ECA will provide technical assistance for this purpose. The indicators of progress will include the extent to which there is increased production in Africa of CD-ROMs with information on aspects of African development, and the number of databases from Africa on the Internet. Disseminating African Information. As a corollary to organising Africa's information in easily retrievable and transmittable forms, there is a need to disseminate information on Africa's development. ECA is the only institution working on development of African information on CD-ROMs. One important component of this effort will be to make the resources of ECA's library, including all its publications, accessible to Africa's academic community, policymakers and research institutions through electronic connectivity. This will include transmitting the abstracts of ECA's new acquisitions, publications and other reports through electronic media. ECA will create a World Wide Web/Gopher server to facilitate connection with ECA's clients. Indicators of progress will include the number of African WWW sites, and measures of use. Statistical Development Rehabilitation of Africa's Statistical System has emerged as a priority issue, in the light of the serious deterioration of national statistical capacities alongside the economic crisis of the past one and a half decades. Improving the quality and consistency of statistics in African countries is important. Indeed the need to reverse that trend and make sustainable improvements inspired the Addis Ababa Plan of Action for Statistical Development in Africa in the 1990s and its implementation strategy. ECA has been assigned a major role in assisting member states to implement the strategy. Timely and reliable statistical data are needed not only for economic policymaking in the public sector but also for business decisions by private economic agents. Statistical data are also key to monitoring economic and social progress. The range of data needed to meet these requirements are vast, encompassing economic, social, demographic and environmental (natural resources). At the same time, there is no regional database in Africa that carries comprehensive data. ECA will aim to improve its own services and those of member states. Maintaining a Regional Database and Service Centre. The objective is to improve ECA's present regional database by expanding the processing, analysis and dissemination of data on Africa's economic, social, demographic and environmental statistics. This will enable ECA to serve as a regional household data service centre as well. The regional database will have two main functions: to provide data to support ECA's analytic needs and to serve as a regional data services centre. No such centre exists in Africa at present. This centre will be a regional research facility which will acquire, process, store and disseminate in computer-readable form data on household and other surveys. The data sets in the database will beestablished in conformity with agreed standards and guidelines. Improving the regional database will require collaboration with UN System partners. Providing Technical Assistance to Member States in Support of their Statistical Development Efforts. In accordance with the Addis Ababa Plan of Action, member states will be assisted in building up Africa's own information and databases through training at regional and subregional levels. Particular emphasis will be placed on helping member states to link their national statistical offices to the Information Superhighway, to improve access to and dissemination of national data. E. PROMOTING REGIONAL COOPERATION AND INTEGRATION Fostering regional cooperation and integration is a major mandate of ECA and has traditionally occupied centre stage in its work programme. Historically, ECA activities in this area have entailed a two-prong strategy: helping member states prepare for intra-African linkages, and assisting them to establish or strengthen subregional organisations. ECA has a comparative advantage in institution building related to integrati |