Twenty Second Meeting of the Conference of Ministers of The Economic Commission for Africa

Opening Address by
K.Y. Amoako, Executive Secretary, ECA
6 May 1996
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Honourable Prime Minister,

Honourable Ministers of Planning, Finance, and Economic Development,

Ambassador Vijay Makhan, OAU Assistant Secretary General,

Ambassador Yasushi Kurokouchi, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Government of Japan

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I. Welcome

This is an auspicious occasion, made all the more so by the presence and opening statement of Ato Meles Zenawi, who as Prime Minister of our Host Country and as Chairman of the OAU has brought high honour to both positions. Your being here, Mr. Prime Minister, adds to the importance of this Conference. We are grateful for your continuing support of the work of the Commission and for your very inspiring statement this morning.

Honourable Ministers,

Distinguished Delegates and

Distinguished Observers,

Welcome to the first ministerial conference in this new conference centre for Africa. This centre was requested at the 1984 General Assembly by African states to be a home for regional cooperation. It is fitting that this Conference is held in this Centre, for it is a new home for you. May the quality of our work match the magnificence of this facility.

I would also like to extend a very warm welcome to Ambassador Yasushi Kurokouchi, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Government of Japan, our special guest for this meeting. Mr. Ambassador, today, your country Japan, this great economic power, has become the strongest of development partners. The world's largest donor of Official Development Assistance, supplier of well over one billion dollars a year in bilateral aid to sub-Saharan Africa. And with even more to offer Africa as a development partner in terms of expertise, experience and relevant strategies, as the original powerhouse of the East Asian economic miracle.

Mr. Ambassador, your own personal interest in the affairs of our continent and the contribution you have made towards the development and enhancement of Japan's development assistance to Africa is well known and greatly appreciated.

This meeting is the first opportunity for ECA to discuss with you, our Board of Member States, the Commission's plans for a major renewal. It also is an opportunity to discuss with you the United Nations System-wide Special Initiative on Africa. And, as you know, this Conference is my first opportunity to appear before you. For all these reasons this occasion has been anticipated with great pleasure.

If you will permit a personal note, I have now been with your Commission for ten months. As I understand my situation, for administrative matters I am responsible for operating under the rules of the United Nations and to the Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN). Although as you know, our ultimate authority is the United Nations General Assembly, for all practical purposes, however, ECA and I look to this Conference for substantive direction. This is as it should be: we are Africa's institution under African guidance. I personally welcome this. I, like you, am here to serve Africa, to have ECA be a strong voice for Africa, and to join you with an obligation only to act for the best interests of Africa, preferably in concert with others, but if need be to act, with you, independently saying what needs to be said.

I come to you, my Board, learning but also acting. Your directions and guidance are and always will be welcome. I also come to you with the perspective of someone new. I come with questions and I ask your indulgence for them. May I repeat what I said last Tuesday to the Technical Preparatory Committee of the Whole (TEPCOW) that my months in ECA have been made infinitely easier through the always friendly and always collaborative work of our outgoing Bureau. I thank H. E. Ato Girma Birru, the distinguished Chairman of the outgoing Bureau, and each of the Bureau's esteemed members for aiding my smooth transition and for their leadership in bringing us step-by-step to this Conference.

II. A Time of Opportunity

As someone new to this conference, it may be useful to share a few views. My perspective is that of someone who has worked in Africa for many years and who also has had global responsibilities in a global institution. Africa has been through extraordinarily difficult times. The economic depression of the 1980s and the early 1990s, the still unresolved debt crisis, and a global economy which too often sidelines Africa, has taken its toll.

But we Africans are resilient, and against the odds of much of global opinion we are coming out of economic depression. Sacrifice and diligence, risk-taking and prudent management, leadership and improved governance, and fostering the private and civil society sectors have all played a role. Only the uninformed can miss a new purposefulness in much of Africa and only those too focused on the negative cannot see the better results accruing to Africa.

I wish to propose that this is a time of opportunity for Africa. We can now have enough hope to will ourselves a better future. There is momentum to build upon. There is progress in many places. There are a number of governments mobilizing more resources. And there are choices to make.

This has powerful meaning for this Commission, and, I daresay, for the governmental functions of planning and finance. It is one circumstance when all one has time to do is to cope with daily emergencies and to figure out how to create softer landings for economies. It is quite another thing when there is sufficient growth, first to be able to plan a different future and second to be able to make real choices about that future. We are now in a renaissance of our respective functions. It is a time of opportunity for the work we do separately and together. One can be allowed optimism for Africa, for the planning and finance functions of governance, and for a better future for ECA.

We at ECA have added reasons for optimism since we benefit from a very active year of the United Nations System. This past year was the year of the Cairo Conference on Population and Development, the year of the Beijing Conference on Women, the year of the launching of the historic United Nations System-wide Special Initiative on Africa... all of which drew upon the Copenhagen Summit on Social Development. In these efforts this was the year that the United Nations obtained more internal coordination than ever in its history, and it was the year that the UN System placed more responsibility in its Regional Commission for Africa than ever in its history.

A time of opportunity, a time of responsibility.

III. A Time of Renewal

And a time of Renewal. For us, this Conference is the capstone of nearly a year-long effort to position ECA to seize the opportunities, take on the responsibilities and to act with far more effectiveness and impact. I believe that renewing ECA is enormously important for the success not just of the institution, but for wider areas of influence. Permit me to explain.

((Lights dim))

A. Our Perspective is not different from Yours

1. We are Committed to Renew ECA to SERVE AFRICA BETTER. We have served Africa and are serving it. But we think we can serve it better. In Renewing ECA we, like you, have a Vision of Africa for the 21st Century. It is a progressive vision. We see a Renewed Africa:

with Rising GDP, taking advantage of solid global growth, projected at 5.2 per cent over the next decade and slightly less, but still solid for Africa, a growth level which will help reduce poverty;

We see Continuing Reforms, carried out with more experience and prudence than the past, and incorporating balanced safety nets for the poor. These reforms will transit into more normal patterns of good governance;

We see Improved Terms of Trade as Africa learns to live in the post Uruguay Round World and where the pace of decline in terms of trade slows down;

We see Africa Connected within itself so that while proud cultural and linguistic traditions continue, the old divides of trade along artificial lines are replaced by new solidarities; and that Africa will be profitably connected with the global economy.

B. Renewed ECA

1. To make this vision happen will require work from all of us including a Renewed ECA. ECA needs a renewal:

Because, your Governments, the General Assembly and a number of global and regional fora have given us specific Responsibilities;

Because there are excellent new opportunities as Africa is at a turning point;

Because you and I are part of a new generation of workers and leaders, aware of the wretched colonial past, but not immobilized by it;

Because marginalization must be arrested by a United Africa;

Because we have new UN Responsibilities, including co-managing the UN System-wide Special Initiative for Africa;

Because there is need for us to be a positive force, to emphasize what works and to bolster faith in itself;

And because We can Do Better.

2. In our renewal our Guiding Principles are:

Excellence;

Cost Effectiveness; and

Partnership.

3. We aim to:

sharpen programme focus;

use far more new technologies in our operations;

further foster Africa's growing pluralistic forces, particularly the private sector and civil society;

we will strive for consensus;

we will have much greater outreach; and

we will increase our accountability to you, to the United Nations and to Africans at large.

4. The Process of Renewal has involved:

Expert Diagnosis by a number of world class centres of expertise;

Major Reviews in which there has been more in-house participation than in any time in memory;

A major Consultation four months ago on our proposed programmes with the full Bureau of this Conference and an impressive group of leading ministers, academics, NGOs and private sector leaders. As well, I have visited a number of African capitals, most recently in North Africa, meeting with ministers and heads of state.

5. From all this we are underway to carry out:

a major reorganization;

a redeployment of staff based on careful skills assessments and strict adherence to UN personnel rules;

a series of management reforms;

systems to better assure full accountability;

a much improved personnel system where fairness, transparency and high professionalism will be the rule;

and a series of Institution Strengthening Steps, including:

Training of staff;

Skills upgrading;

Fellowships to allow outstanding younger Africans to work with us; and

Sabbaticals to allow leading academics to spend time with us.

6. At the heart of this Renewal is the proposal for Reforming ECA's Programmes which you have before you. Our consultations, all my meetings with your governments, and a recent consultative meeting with 20 donors all urged us to Focus carefully.

a. From 21 programme areas in 9 themes, we will have five themes and two cross-cutting issues;

b. The themes are spelled out in the documentation. I will mention them briefly. They are:

Facilitating economic and social policy analysis, where we will sharpen our focus to give added emphasis to remedies to poverty and to highlighting best practices in Africa's economic and social policies;

Ensuring food security and sustainable development where the foundations of so much development: food security, population and environment, will be the focus;

Strengthening development management to continue key work on fostering effective public sectors, the private sector and civil society;

Harnessing information for development, an expansion of exciting work which could help Africa leapfrog years of effort; and

Promoting regional cooperation and integration to work on the Abuja Treaty in carrying out shared responsibilities with OAU and ADB, to help sub-regional organizations, and to carry out responsibilities in transport and energy.

7. Our Two Cross-Cutting Themes are:

Gender where we will engender all our programmes and upgrade our African Centre for Women. I believe the gender issue is one of the keys to progress in Africa and elsewhere; and

Capacity building, which also will cross-cut all of ECA's programmes.

In each of our consultations leading to this Conference there has been consistent and impressive support for the themes, cross-cutting issues and sub-themes we have identified. The framework seems to stand up well and has been strongly endorsed by TEPCOW for your approval. But we have been consistently advised to have disciplined focus and selectivity within this framework in order to increase the likelihood of significant impact from our work. In my address to TEPCOW, I illustrated a number of programmed choices we face and solicited their and your advice. We cannot be all things to all people. I will not make promises to you which ECA cannot keep. So I invite you to guide us to the essential as opposed to the desirable. This will help us have mutually realistic expectations and aid our being accountable to you for performance.

There is much more to ECA's renewal:

8. The Commission's operations will strive to position ECA to become a much improved:

Think tank for Africa;

a Clearing House for best practices in Africa;

a policy integrator being not the sole-source producer of thinking, but the integrator of the best minds we can find in Africa; and

a Catalyst for people with good Ideas.

This is a significant reorientation in which networking and advocacy will be stronger features of our work.

9. We will also reform ECA's Modalities of implementation creating New Ways to Operate commensurate with an organization aiming to be of service in the 21st century:

We will use more electronic means of communication;

We are improving Dissemination of our products;

We will improve country targeting to be of better service by working closer with your ambassadors here in Addis Ababa for political and policy contacts and by establishing a network of country representatives to link us better at the technical level;

We will produce fewer, but more policy relevant reports;

We will hold fewer but more goal-oriented Meetings; and

We will work with Member States to rationalize sponsored institutions which are either duplicative or unviable. The technical work has long been done for this. What we need is to search for political solutions to increase levels of comfort for this rationalization.

We are Part of the United Nations

1. That brings us strengths by association with a number of essential institutions, and we will work closer within the UN family.

2. We have new responsibilities from the UN in that I co-chair the UN System-wide Special Initiative on Africa, which so many of your governments helped to launch in March.

3. And we are likely to receive new responsibilities to help harmonize the UN's work in Africa.

4. Even if the UN did not have a Budget Squeeze we would undertake these reforms because we must Serve Africa Better.

C. In all our work we will be Seeking Partnerships. Even the largest corporations in the world do this. A collection of over 250 professionals can hardly do less.

1. Within Africa we will be Networking significantly with policy networks and centres. We will be helping to create firmer links within and across sub-regional and linguistic networks.

2. We will foster South-South cooperation with the help of regional UN commissions in Asia and Latin America. Last month senior delegations from China, India and Indonesia came to discuss with us several concrete linkages. There is great promise in working with these countries, as many of you know firsthand. There is also very interesting potential that the Government of Japan's TICAD process can help to foster additional valuable South-South cooperation.

3. And we will partner With Donors as we have for some 38 years, seeking help in capacity building tasks for the institution and for strengthened programmes. In preparation for donor partnerships and for this Conference we met last month with 20 donors, including all the G-7 countries, the Scandinavians, Austria, Belgium, The Netherlands, the Bretton Woods institutions, the Carnegie Corporation, and, as I mentioned, China, India and Indonesia. There was firm support for the renewal process; consistent advice to focus ECA's programmes sharply within the proposed programme framework and the promise that if the reforms are implemented, important support will be likely.

D. The spirit of all this, was caught by a leading South African academic who attended our January consultation when he said that the renewed ECA we proposed would allow Africa to say:

"This is our institution, carrying out our agenda on our continent."

IV. Next Steps in the Renewal of ECA

We have gone far. We are told that what we are doing is unusual in the multilateral system. Whether that is true or not, the renewal is clearly the most thoroughgoing reform in ECA's history. Yes we have gone far, but without you we cannot go further. This Conference is the gateway to ECA's future. We look forward very much to your discussion on the renewal. After you have acted on our proposed renewal, we will incorporate your guidance and then be able to proceed immediately:

with the Restructuring of the programme side of the House (the Administrative side having already been restructured);

We will then move to programme selection for the Medium-Term Plan on a careful basis, within the framework and guidance approved by you; and

we will rationalize current programmes within the approved framework, as possible and feasible.

The Medium-Term Plan, presented for your approval, is congruent with the consolidated Programme framework I have just outlined to you.

In addition, we wish to proceed to rationalize our 1996-97 biennial programme, consistent with honourably discharging commitments and consistent with your guidance, so that we can incorporate now to the maximum extent feasible three realities: a decreased core budget from the United Nations, new efficiencies in modalities, and a further focus on priorities.

With these important steps in place we will consolidate efficiencies to do more with less in the short run, but we will be building trust with you and donor partners to do more with more over the longer term. You and I face new positive opportunities. And I firmly believe that a renewed ECA will have a much brighter future.

(((Lights UP)))

V. The Situation of the United Nations

We have a brighter future, in fair part I wish to stress, because we are a part of the United Nations, not despite being part of the UN. This may seem paradoxical because we are part of the UN Secretariat, the most hard-pressed part of the UN system in terms of budget. The rising cost of peacekeeping and the well-known budget delinquencies have contributed to the UN budget crisis. But UN Headquarters understands our needs, appreciates the depth of our renewal efforts and is being particularly supportive. Reform elsewhere may have to be hasty and imposed: our reform has been thoughtful and self-initiated. This will have its rewards.

We also benefit because we will be able to help mobilize some substantial resources for core development tasks in Africa as part of our co-managing the UN System-wide Special Initiative on Africa. In your conference documents is a full report on the Special Initiative. You will see that the Special Initiative naturally accompanies the UN-NADAF programme, adding concrete actions to the promise of NADAF. Because ECA coordinates the task force charged with oversight of NADAF and co-chairs the Special Initiative we particularly recognize the symbiotic nature of the two efforts.

As you know, the Special Initiative breaks new ground in many ways. ECA is privileged to be playing a leading and continuing role in its implementation. We are committed to doing everything possible to assure that every possible help to Africa comes from it. We stand ready to discuss here or later ways in which your governments can take advantage of this historic initiative.

VI. Other Agenda Items

There are many other matters on your agenda deserving comment, but given the excellent work of TEPCOW and a constraint on time, I will limit myself to highlighting a few important issues.

A. Africa's joining the Information Society is the subject of an Action Plan that is vital for all African countries to join, and to feel ownership of. It is, and must be, their plan. I am pleased that TEPCOW has endorsed in principle a Framework Plan of Action which a number in Africa, including ECA, has worked on.

B. Another item is a Joint OAU/ECA Progress Report on implementation of the Abuja Treaty. I want to stress this item given the importance of the Treaty and of an era of enhanced collaboration which OAU Secretary-General Salim Ahmed Salim and I are leading for our two institutions. We plan to put more resources behind the Abuja process, to help far more firmly establish the joint secretariat and to have a well defined workplan for the central tasks of the Abuja process.

C. Third are Statutory Issues, including a progress report on our important On-Going Programmes. We are working hard not to neglect our ongoing responsibilities despite the difficult UN budget situation and our renewal. The Conference will also consider resolutions from subsidiary bodies, and in doing so I raised some issues with TEPCOW which I would like to summarize here. The issue is simply whether all these resolutions are necessary. Over the past five of these conferences we have passed more than 100 resolutions, most of which had multiple actions attached. Yet even of the resolutions we have before this Conference, it would be hard to maintain that all of them are necessary, actionable and add to the reputation of Africa's parliamentary processes.

Perhaps, as the UN system is doing now, we need to review resolutions in an integrated way for follow-up.

VII. Special Items

You will also see on your agenda and on TEPCOW's agenda some special features for discussion on important topics between key international experts and your own expertise. These are intended to augment the substance of your deliberations and to add new features to augment the worth of these Conferences to you and your delegation.

The Special Event at the TEPCOW Conference was a Panel discussion on ECA's Framework Agenda for Capacity Building; which was stimulating and well-received.

The Special Event for our conference will be a High Level Forum tomorrow afternoon, on Public Expenditure and the Poor in Africa. This will be the first of a series of such opportunities at conferences, giving Member States an opportunity to discuss important issues for Africa.

This is parallel to the way in which recent ECOSOC meetings have been enriched. I hope you will find these added features attractive.

Permit me to end on a personal note. You have before you items of considerable significance. You and I would not be here if we did not think that progress were possible. We would not be here if we did not honour ECA's past and have faith in its future. We would not be here if we did not want to see our actions lead to solid results. It is in this joint faith and in this spirit of collaboration and this joined purpose of renewal and recommitment that I and my colleagues thank you for your presence, thank you for your hard work, and join you to see through the task to renew ECA to serve Africa better.

Thank you, Honourable Prime Minister, Honourable Ministers, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, Colleagues.