African Development Forum III

Closing Statement

by K. Y. Amoako,
Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA)

08 March 2002, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Excellencies,
OAU Secretary-General Amara Essy,

Honourable Ministers,
Ambassador Gambari,
Most distinguished Laureates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

This is the final session of ADF III. We have all worked very hard this week. We have a consensus statement that is timely, bold and absolutely built upon the abundant goodwill and seriousness of this Forum's participants.

In this session, out conference Rapporteur will review with you the consensus statement and then have the honour of hearing a statement from the UN Secretary-General and of listening to two extraordinarily accomplished thinkers and doers.

Let me first give you a little bit of background about the consensus statement. It was drafted by an outstanding team of rapporteurs led by Dr. Andrew Mullei, Executive Director of the African Centre for Economic Growth. Dr. Mullei is an experienced central banker, research director, and advisor who is highly respected development theorists and practitioners across the continent.

In his team I want to especially recognize a good friend and dedicated Africanist, Alex de Waal, who is a writer and academic, and who also directs the work of Justice Africa, a partner organization in the outstanding Symposium prior to this Forum.

Others on this fine team include Yinka Adeyemi, a journalist with a major Nigerian newspaper whose beat includes the United Nations, Andrew Allimadi, a journalist with the Financial Times, Chantal Dupasquier, formerly of the Bank of Canada and just arrived in Addis; Caroline Knapp of the International Center for Research on Women, and Vicent Nwanma, of Dow Jones Africa.

They worked enormously hard and I want to ask them to stand to receive our appreciation.

Based upon a close listening of all the sessions this week, the team produced a draft consensus statement. Yesterday afternoon, representatives of each stakeholder group, governmental representatives, and representatives of the major regional and sub-regional organizations, met under the able chairing of our esteemed Deputy Executive Secretary, Dr. Lalla Ben Barka.

Although many of you were in the session on NEPAD when the draft consensus statement was being discussed, I am glad that the review session was open to all of you, and that many of you chose to participate in it, to add your substantive and artful thoughts to our collective final product.

The discussion of the draft consensus statement was very constructive and was conclusive. I want to thank everyone who helped make agreement on the draft possible: including all those who participated in the discussion of it and all the staff who backstopped it.

This team included a large number of ECA and OAU staff who produced careful reports on each and every session of the forum. There was also a lot of late night translation and printing of the statement, and I appreciate deeply the dedication of the staffs involved.

I believe we now have agreement on the consensus statement but that judgement will have to await your reaction after the statement is presented to you.

Friends,

It is hard to think of it, and I do so with extreme reluctance, because this week has been such an important, fulfilling and important time to be together, and, now, we have had such an uplifting afternoon, But, it is time to go home.

Before we part, I want to thank all of you who participated this week. You were not merely tourists of these meetings, but actively and seriously engaged..and we are all the better for your having been here.

And I want to thank all those wonderful colleagues in the Commission who have worked so hard over so many months:

• Our terrific Deputy Executive Secretary, Lalla Ben Barka for her untiring leadership of the teams which put together this forum;

• To our friend Abdul Mohamed whose untiring intellectual and organizational brilliance added so much to the whole ADF

• Dr. Youssif Suliman and his division working on integration who backstopped so much of the content of this Forum;

• Mr. Peter Robleh, Ms. Medina Wesseh and their ADF coordination team who put together this Forum;

• Peter da Costa and his great communications team;

• Patrick Chumiya and his administrative team which includes our interpreters, translators, printers and conference crew who served us all so well,

• and my personal staff who also burned barrels of midnight oil in support of this Forum.

This is not Goodbye. Because even now we are planning ADF IV. The theme of ADF IV will be Governance for a Progressing Africa.

So not goodbye. But a wish for safe journey and the hope that we will see you back here again for ADF IV.

I now declare this African Development Forum concluded and adjourned.