Statement by

Mr. Robert Okello,
Director of the Office of Policy and Programme Coordination (OPC), ECA

May 23, 2006
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Dear representatives of the African Union and NEPAD,
Chairpersons and coordinators of the Infrastructure sub-clusters;
Dear Colleagues,

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you, on behalf of the Executive Secretary, Mr. Abdoulie Janneh, to ECA at this meeting of the UN Regional Consultations Infrastructure Cluster in support of NEPAD. I would like to thank you for dedicating time and resources, which we all know are scarce, to come and participate in this important meeting. I believe that your time here will be well spent.

This cluster is one of the most diverse in the issues it addresses, and one of the most dynamic in the regional consultations mechanism, which comprises to date seven clusters, dealing with the following group of issues: Agriculture, Trade and Market Access; Governance, Peace and Security; Environment, Population and Urbanization; Human Resources Development, HIV/AIDS and Employment; Sciences and Technology; and last Advocacy and Communication.

The number and wide scope of issues addressed by the clusters reflect the diversity of focus and mandates of the various UN organizations and non-UN organizations active in the framework of the Regional Consultations. Of course, it is also a reflection of Africa’s huge developmental challenges and needs, as adequately expressed in the NEPAD vision for Africa and in the outcome document of the 2005 World Summit.

Despite this diversity, all UN organizations share the common mandate in Africa to support the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), and other major African development initiatives. This was reaffirmed in resolution GA57/2 of the UN general Assembly, of Sept 2002. NEPAD therefore provides a basis for collaboration in Africa.

At the international level, the World summit on sustainable development recognized the need to strengthen the UN wide inter-agency coordination in order to improve coherence and effectiveness in actions, and thereby reduce overlap and duplication. Therefore the UN organizations are called by the international community to cooperate more among themselves and with major non-UN development stakeholders in Africa.

Colleagues,

The objective of the regional consultations framework is to improve collaboration, and facilitate the emergence of activities jointly planned and jointly implemented in support of NEPAD. This, of course, does not preclude direct support by individual organizations to the NEPAD or to other African development initiatives, but should rather reinforce their ultimate effectiveness in areas where there is a clear strategic advantage for the organization.

The cluster arrangements therefore can be seen as a framework in which organizations seek to improve more effectiveness and efficiency in achieving their individual mandate in Africa, by avoiding wasteful duplication of efforts while providing a coherent support to the implementation of the AU/NEPAD programme.

Dear Colleagues,

Let me now touch briefly on some of the challenges we all face in achieving these common commitments. I would like to refer to the document produced by ECA with the contribution of each cluster, at the occasion of the visit of the UN Secretary General’s Panel on international support to NEPAD, in March 2006, in Addis Ababa. In this document, each cluster/sub-cluster highlighted its achievements, identified key challenges that it faces in providing an effective support to NEPAD, and suggested some ways by which the SG Panel could assist to overcome them.

Allow me to focus on three of the constraints you identified:

1. Financial and budgetary constraints

Apart from the UN Water/Africa group - because of its success in acquiring extra-budgetary funding at both the secretariat and agency levels- other sub-clusters continue to face immense difficulties in mobilizing financial resources to fully and effectively participate in coordination meetings. This has also restricted the amount of time that agencies that have volunteered to chair or serve as secretariat could allow to perform their functions.

2. Participation of non-UN organizations in the collaboration

I would like to again salute the participation of the African Union Commission, and at the same time note that we have had difficulty in engaging effectively non-UN organizations in the collaboration. Even within UN-Water/Africa, where the African Development Bank played an important role in the creation of the original Inter-Agency Group on Water, called IGWA, which later evolved into UN-Water/Africa, the status of non-UN organizations needs to be clarified in order to avoid misunderstandings on their roles. Acknowledging the strategic advantage of some non-UN organizations in the development of Africa, finding solutions to lift the barriers for their active involvement in the collaborative mechanism must remain an important objective of the regional consultations.

3. Institutional and human constraints internal to AU/NEPAD and the RECs

This was identified by the clusters as one of the constraints to promoting an effective interface with AU/NEPAD. Issues such as the still evolving institutional status of the AU/NEPAD with respect to the African Union and other regional organizations; the constraints of human and institutional capacities at the AU/NEPAD secretariat and in its technical divisions; and the stretched capacities of Regional Economic Communities, which are the implementation arms of AU/NEPAD, are key challenges to be addressed.

Dear colleagues,

The last regional consultations posed some fundamental questions on how to improve the cluster arrangements, and make collaboration more effective. Some recommendations were made, but I have to admit that follow-up activities fell short, and part of the responsibility is ours. Let me then propose that this meeting, in looking ahead to the next regional consultations meeting, which we hope will be held in September 2006, identify practical measures to overcome these now known challenges.

To conclude, I wish to share my hope that your meeting will be able to come out with concrete measures to improve the effectiveness of our combined assistance to AU/NEPAD.

I wish you fruitful discussions.

Thank you for your attention.