UNITED NATIONS ECONOMIC COMMISSION FOR AFRICA

Report of the Open Space on
"Sharpening our focus, strengthening
our partnership and increasing our impact"
Addis Ababa, 25-27 September 1995
Synthesis report

Background

The current mandate of ECA, which may be summarized as "to provide intellectual leadership and technical support to African countries", includes the following functions:

To promote economic and social development through regional and subregional cooperation and integration; to initiate socio-economic development policies; to provide advisory services to governments and their intergovernmental organizations; and to serve as a regional coordinating framework for the development activities of the United Nations system in Africa. ECA's role may therefore be viewed as to provide the bridge between Africa and its partners in development.

Since its establishment in 1958, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) has at time either revised its mandate, changed its internal structure, or re-oriented its program focus in order to respond more effectively to the continually changing development needs of Africa as well as to changes in the world development environment in general. Thus, as Africa braces itself for the twenty-first century, ECA now faces the challenge to renew itself in order to" serve Africa better".

In response to the above challenge, ECA has embarked on the process of crafting a new vision under the theme: sharpening our focus, strengthening our partnership and increasing our impact. This process includes identification of what objectives we should pursue as well as which modalities we should use in order to fulfil our mission.

The outcome of the sessions under the six themes are synthesized into three broad categories of how to:

(i) work with clients, including identification of clients and their needs
(ii) work with each other at ECA;
(iii) work with partners such as African organizations, research institutions, UN agencies, financial and bilateral organizations.