"Joint ADB/ECA Symposium"

Address

by K. Y. Amoako,
Executive Secretary,
Economic Commission for Africa

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
02 June 2003

Your Excellency, the President of the Republic of Niger
Your Excellency, the Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Your Excellency, the President of the African Development Bank
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen

As the Symposium this year is a joint ADB/ECA activity, I join my colleague and friend Omar Kabbaj in thanking all of you for accepting our invitation to participate.

Arrangements are also now being put in place for our two institutions to jointly sponsor and jointly host the next African Development Forum together with the African Union.

The theme of our Symposium is progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals in Africa. We are now half way through the 25-year period, from 1990 to 2015, in which we aim to eradicate absolute poverty and hunger, reduce by half the number of people living on less than one dollar per day, and meet a number of other key indicators of social and economic progress for the world's poor.

Perhaps the most remarkable fact about the MDGs is that they were adopted at all. At the United Nations Millennium Summit, there was a powerful consensus on the need to reduce poverty and improve social conditions in the world's poorest regions. All of the member states of the world have agreed to this. The MDGs are common commitments, whose achievements demand a true and more effective partnership between rich and poor nations.

The United Nations and its agencies are framing their activities around the MDGs. They provide a target to aim at and a set of indicators whereby progress can be measured. They thereby provide consensus and coherence. The goals themselves - reducing poverty, increasing educational levels, enhancing gender equality, reducing child mortality, and reducing the burden of disease - are closely interlinked. They demand a holistic approach by all partners in development. This symposium focuses upon the key question, what progress are we making on the ground towards meeting these goals?

Today I would like to emphasise how rolling back the HIV/AIDS epidemic is desirable not only in itself, but is also central to achieving all the other MDGs. Not only is AIDS a survival issue for millions of Africans, it is also pivotal to our aspirations of sustainable development and good governance.

At the ECA, we believe that nothing is more critical than overcoming HIV/AIDS. The African Development Forum 2000 focused upon AIDS as 'Africa's greatest leadership challenge.' The Consensus and Plan of Action that resulted from ADF 2000 contributed to the OAU's April 2001 Abuja Declaration on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and other related infections diseases. These were critical steps in building a leadership consensus across Africa to confront the terrible realities of this disease, which has claimed 20 million lives already in Africa, and may well claim a similar number in the coming decade.

We are now confronting the equally stark reality that suffering and death on this scale will severely impact upon our ability to meet all our other development goals. As we try to do more, we are faced with a frightening erosion of our human resources. Too often, we are struggling to maintain today's limited capacity.

It is in response to this challenge that the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan has convened the Commission for HIV/AIDS and Governance in Africa, a new high-level initiative which I shall be chairing, and which will be headquartered here in the ECA.

The Commission aims to equip African policymakers with the tools for addressing the profound structural impact HIV/AIDS is having on our capacity to meet our development challenges.

Let me focus on how the epidemic may impact upon the first three MDGs, concerned with poverty, education, and gender equality.

The first MDG is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, to halve between 1990 and 2015 the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day, and to halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.

Success in this demands an annual growth rate of about 7%, which is considerably faster than Africa has achieved in recent years.

Economists currently estimate that HIV/AIDS is cutting about 1% off the growth rates of affected countries. Although this kind of setback is quite within the range of what can be caused by policy errors, drought, or commodity price fluctuations, consider what it means when aggregated year-on-year over a decade. A yearly shackle of one per cent may not seem huge, but it means that in a decade's time, key national economies, such as South Africa and Kenya, will be substantially smaller than they would otherwise have been, and that the poverty reduction goal will be much harder to achieve.

The MDGs commit us to eliminating hunger. But the depth of poverty in much of Africa means that millions are vulnerable to acute hunger should the rains fall or the prices of key export commodities fall. This country, Ethiopia, is a case in point. Despite a decade of internal peace and pro-poor policies, twelve million Ethiopians face hunger today.

Rural Ethiopia still has low rates of HIV. But what may happen if the AIDS epidemic follows the same trajectory as in southern Africa? The future then would be bleak in the extreme. Families afflicted by AIDS are less able to grow food and less able to withstand shocks such as drought. The wider community bears the burden of caring for and educating the growing number of children orphaned by AIDS.

One of the most common household responses to desperate poverty and hunger is to take their children out of school. Girls in particular are being withdrawn from school in order to assist with essential domestic duties, including caring for the sick. Children orphaned by AIDS are also less likely to be in school.

MDG two is to achieve universal primary education by 2015. This goal is directly jeopardised by the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

We must never overlook that is women bear the brunt of the AIDS epidemic. Women take up the burden of care for people living with AIDS and bringing up children orphaned by AIDS. They grow most of Africa's food. Add to this the fact that an estimated 58% of those infected with HIV in this continent are women, and we see that the burdens falling on Africa's women are becoming unsupportable.

One of the drivers of the AIDS epidemic in this continent is the unequal status of women, and their vulnerability to exploitation and sexual abuse. In a vicious twist, it seems that the epidemic itself is intensifying women's vulnerability. Overcoming the impacts of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on women is crucial if we are to meet MDG number three, namely to promote gender equality and empower women.

Across the board, therefore, we see how HIV/AIDS and its wider social and economic impacts are standing in the way of achieving the MDGs. For this reason, I am making the work of the Commission for HIV/AIDS and Governance in Africa a priority for the ECA.

Africa has lost too much time in coming to grips with the daunting challenges posed by this epidemic. Too many lives have been lost. I am confident that the resourcefulness and spirit of Africans, who have endured so many hardships with such resilience, will triumph over this encroaching threat.

Excellencies Ladies and Gentlemen,

In this presentation I have been stressing the centrality of HIV/AIDS to our struggle to overcome poverty and hunger.

But the imperative of responding to the threat of HIV/AIDS should not in any way obscure the need to face our many other challenges. Indeed, all our tasks are very closely inter-linked, and we must make progress in them all.

This Symposium today is addressing a cross-section of these challenges.

We shall be discussing the need to ensure that educational opportunities are expanded at all levels, recognising that our must basic resource is our people.

We shall also be focusing on the policies necessary to accelerate pro-poor growth.

And, we will address a critically important question: namely, how we can establish stronger partnerships between African countries and their development partners, based on mutual accountability and development effectiveness.

In conclusion, let me extend my congratulations to all those who have worked so hard to put together a programme that is so focused and relevant to our policy challenges. I also want to thank the many eminent personalities who have graciously agreed to participate in the Symposium.

We are especially pleased to be joined this morning by the President of Niger, H.E. Mamadou Tanja and the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, H.E. Meles Zenawi.

Excellencies,

Your presence here today is a clear sign of the total dedication of our most senior political leaders to lead the way, both intellectually and spiritually, in the struggle against poverty on this continent.

Colleagues and Friends,

Thank you all for being here. I look forward to what I am sure will be a day of fruitful discussion.