17th Meeting of the Technical Preparatory Committee of the Whole (TEPCOW)

Opening Address by
K.Y. Amoako, Executive Secretary, ECA
30 April 1996
Addis Ababa

I. Opening

Distinguished members of TEPCOW and other esteemed colleagues:

This is an important day for us. It is the first official committee meeting in this remarkable centre, a centre requested by African states to serve Africa. It is the first official continent-wide discussion of a different ECA. And it is my first appearance before you.

The meeting that TEPCOW is servicing is one which we have been working towards for the past year. It is not an incidental meeting to us; it is not perfunctory or routine for us. Indeed, it is the culmination of a lot of very hard thinking and hard work. This Conference of Ministers is not the endpoint of our work, but it is the gateway to our future. It is no trivial matter to us. In this and all meetings of TEPCOW my colleagues and I want to work with you as productively as possible, we also want to set the stage for increasingly productive and consequential interactions with the Conference.

So I welcome you with special warmth and appreciation for your being here. You will find us, as you have often found us in the past, not sitting in opposition to you, not sitting on the other side of the table, but as partners in your work: anticipating your discussions, soliciting your advice, and anxious for you to be successful.

We are here because we share fundamentals: we are in the service of Africa, we share a commitment to regional cooperation; and we share a commitment to ECA. All of us could be doing something else, but we have chosen to be here and to stand for these fundamentals. We are bold enough to believe that the success of the Conference of Ministers will be helpful not only to ECA, but to a progressing Africa as well. ECA is one of your instruments to help Africa and we take that faith in us most seriously.

You will find that it is a good time to be here. Our issues are fairly clear-cut, they are important and I think my colleagues have done a good bit of useful work in the documentation for this meeting.

The purpose of my remarks today is to review with you the key agenda points. I would like to engage you in discussing the agenda and in bringing about important outcomes which I would like to suggest for your consideration.

II. Africa Requires a Renewed ECA

When I address the Conference in a few days, I shall present an overview of Africa's development situation. ECA's full analysis has just been issued. I commit to you that in future years it will be published in a more timely fashion. In these remarks permit me to give you a thumbnail sketch of where I see Africa now.

Beginning with the second oil shock of 1979, Africa has been through figurative Hell. My distinguished predecessor, Adebayo Adedeji correctly called the 1980s "a lost decade for Africa." For many countries a record of negative development continued into the early 1990s. But even the worst nightmares end. The picture today is much better. Not universally better, but impressively better. Africa is clearly coming out of economic depression. But we Africans face seven basic challenges:

-- We must continue a path of improved economic and social policies. These policies must be aimed at a good quality as well as a good quantity of growth, particularly in securing growth which attacks the scourge of poverty. To assure that development embraces and services our peoples, growth must embrace social development. You will find me an optimist about social development and about poverty just as I am an optimist about Africa's growth prospects. Indeed, the issues are closely related.

-- We Africans must cope with the interplay of food security, population and environment. These are fundamentals in our development structure and have been too often neglected.

-- We must strengthen the management of our economies, both the public and the private sector along with enabling civil society to produce its manifold advantages for development;

-- We must prepare for the 21st century and nothing does that better than joining the information age;

-- We must unite our strengths in regional cooperation and integration as a way of not being marginalized by globalization; and

-- We Africans, must unite the strengths in our society. I daresay that the human component of our societies which could add the greatest strength to development but whose potential is now being most under-utilized is our women. By fully incorporating women in development we make a marvellous investment in our future.

These factors, economic and social policy, sustainable development, development management, informatics, regional cooperation and gender are all critical challenges we face as a continent, and as an institution. They have impelled ECA to examine how it can Serve Africa Better in the years ahead.

III. Renewal of ECA

The result is what will be discussed as perhaps the major item in your agenda, and that is the renewal of ECA on a scale not seen in the organization's history and, it is fair to say, rare in multilateral life.

I will review this renewal with the full Conference. Having studied the documents for this conference and perhaps having far more experience in linking Africa and the Commission together, you probably know the rationale for renewal at least as well as I. Suffice it to say that to carry out the responsibilities this Conference and other official fora have given to us, because Africa is at a potential turning point where seizing opportunities and moving with forcefulness is possible unlike so many years in the past; because there is a new generation of leaders at the technical and increasingly at the political level with whom I feel a strong kinship, a generation eager to move ahead, because marginalization must be arrested and that requires a strong and often unified African voice with solid proposals and strong alliances; because ECA has received important responsibilities from the UN system and more are on the way; because there is need to emphasize the positive things going on in Africa to bolster risk-taking and to counter negative images; and because ECA can do better....because of all these things, we propose an important renewal of ECA to serve Africa better in the years ahead.

I must be very frank with you. Some of you with good memories have every right to ask whether ECA is just riding the wave of UN reform to be fashionable, whether we are really any more serious than the reforms ECA put on the table over the past five years. In other words, are the steps we propose to you worth being the major focus of this meeting. It is thus important that you and the full Conference have a complete understanding of the seriousness, I must say seriousness with which we have approached this reform.

The renewal presented to the Conference for endorsement is historic. As we have planned ECA's renewal we have opted not only to have focus, but to have Strategic Focus so that the things we do help achieve credible and worthy goals.

The process of renewal entails three Guiding Principles:

-- Excellence, where we aim at high quality and high impact;

-- Cost Effectiveness, making the best possible use of our resources, particularly through reorganization, better modalities

and more use of economical technologies; and

-- Partnership, to create alliances, gather political and financial allies, and to work together for more significant programme results.

The Process of Renewal has entailed a number of progressive steps, themselves new for the organization and rare for the UN:

-- We have taken great care to have highly expert diagnostic and prescriptive work done on our programmes and management through the deployment of a number of studies utilizing the best resources we could identify around the world and the best of our staff.

-- We have carried out the most participatory in-house reviews in memory, involving an extraordinary level of commitment from the entire professional workforce gathered in open fora sessions (the last round of which took place just a few weeks ago).

-- We held a major consultation on ECA's proposed programmes this past January with an impressive group of 40 leading ministers, academics, and NGO and private sector leaders from throughout Africa including our esteemed Bureau who took leading roles in this consultation;

-- I have consulted widely in a series of visits to a number of our governments meeting with leading ministers and Heads of State in many parts of Africa. The encouragement to move ahead forcefully with ECA's renewal has been uplifting.

-- We held an unprecedented meeting with 50 representatives from 20 different donors last month to see if the direction we are heading would be supported once we gain the Conference's endorsement to our renewal and elaborate our programme. (The answer, by the way, was a resounding Yes, with many donors saying that ECA is in the vanguard of change in the UN and that a continuation of this renewal would be well supported by the donors.)

-- We have already reorganized the administrative side of the house and instituted a large number of systems changes aimed at higher efficiencies, an overhaul of the modalities of our operations and more effectiveness in what we do. These actions have been warmly applauded by our staff, our Staff Union and by UN Headquarters whose advice has been incorporated in what we present to you today. All this has brought us to this meeting. There are many more things we must do, are ready to do and will do, but only after the Conference endorse our renewal.

Once our renewal is endorsed there will be an organizational restructuring of the programme side, a series of major capacity building steps inside the house, a redeployment of staff based on need and skills assessments, and even more changes in how we conduct ECA's business.

I want to summarize at this point:

1. there is a strong rationale for change;

2. the actions taken have resulted from careful study and consultation;

3. we have strong backing for what we propose to you; and

4. we are told that the quality and scope of the changes we are pacesetting.

I want to add an important point: what we are doing is not throwing away the past, but building upon it. ECA has had many proud accomplishments and it has established many very important services to your countries which we will continue and enhance. It has an important store of human resources which could not be easily replaced. In other words, what is being proposed is not a revolution, but a very major evolution, an evolution which we will not just propose for endorsement, but which we will carry out to the letter.

IV. Components of ECA's Renewal

I would now like to review with you our plans for institution strengthening, our programme consolidation and the modalities our programmes will deploy in the future. In this review I shall try to indicate the ways in which TEPCOW could be particularly helpful to this planned significant evolution.

A. Institution Strengthening

First, institution strengthening. Over the next two years, particularly, we will be taking a number of steps to upgrade skills, augment staff and institutionalize ways of operating more productively and with greater impact. We have invited partnerships which can help strengthen our institutional capacities, through: Training of staff, twinning of staffs, skills upgrading, fellowships to bring young African scholars to work in ECA, and sponsorship of sabbaticals to bring renowned scholars practitioners of development to work with ECA. These will have particular relevance for the next two years during which we are re-engineering the institution. There will be greatly added value to the extent these capacity building activities can be designed within the context of the development and implementation of ECA's new programmes.

B. Consolidating Programmes

Second, we are consolidating and refocusing programmes. From nine programmes in 21 different areas we have decided to concentrate on five core themes and 2 cross-cutting themes. This choice of programme concentration responds to very clear mandates from our Member States. We also found very significant guidance from OAU's Council of Ministers March 1995 Cairo meeting, the result of which was adopted at the June 1995 Summit of the African Heads of States and Governments here in Addis Ababa in the document now more popularly known as "Relaunching Africa's Economic and Social Development; the Cairo Agenda for Action." From these sources of inspiration and the unusually broad consultations we have conducted on these programme themes, we are confident in presenting the themes to you. We believe these themes respond to Africa's priorities as noted in the overview analysis I presented at the beginning of these remarks and in responding to the Cairo agenda.

The framework brings together a number of previously unconnected work areas in order to create synergy, inter-linkages and reality of approach. We will be able to manage work in these areas at higher quality to reflect the real-world inter-relationships while having lower overhead cost. However, within each of these themes we must exercise great discipline and selectivity both to assure high quality work which is crafted for impact as well as to focus on what is truly significant and, in many cases, urgent. The themes are a framework for planning, budgeting and programme selectivity. It is precisely in moving from the framework to the focus and selectively within the themes that I come to this Conference for advice and guidance. ECA is transition has limited resources, capacities which are a base to build upon, and the need to demonstrate real impact from our work. We cannot do everything: we must do the essential. Our budgetary situation is going to get worse, not better over this biennium. We face a 10% cut in our core budget on top of declines in extra-budgetary resources by 75% in the 1990/91-1994/5 period.

I am confident that if ECA focuses sharply and produces for impact we will set the stage for new resource growth, but let us move together one step at a time. At this time in our work, we must work together to be selective, focused and measured in what we propose. It is in this spirit and with this need of the support and guidance of this Conference that I want to review our proposed programme framework with you.

There will be five major themes of work.

The first theme is Facilitating economic and social policy analysis. Under this theme will be important work on longer term social and economic policy issues with a heavy emphasis on the alleviation of poverty and the propagation of best practices. I note that we have a number of responsibilities for annual assessments and reporting.

In ECA's future work in this theme area we will be networking with centre of expertise around the continent into order to share experience, learn best practices, integrate thinking on policies and gain help in advocating positions. This will be a different way of doing business.

In selecting areas of concentration we were advised in our January 1996 consultation with African experts to focus on the long term issues, such as the problem of persistent inflation, the need to find alternatives to development assistance, and the need for long-term solutions to the debt problem. At the same time there is considerable interest in short-term advisory services to be provided on a demand basis on such subjects as finding alternative positions in negotiating adjustment programmes, consultative groups and roundtables, and debt negotiations. More details are given in the publication we distributed to you entitled "Serving Africa Better: Strategic Directions for the Economic Commission for Africa." I invite discussion in TEPCOW and in the Conference so that we have your reactions as to what is proposed in this theme area.

The second theme is Ensuring food security and sustainable development. Under this theme will be an integration of existing strengths in food production, population and sustainable environment. We call this fundamentally important area "the nexus". There are a number of well-known agencies working on the component parts of this theme, but nowhere on this continent is the intermix of these fundamental issues receiving the integrated attention we plan to give. For example, ECA could create a forum to identify best practices in managing the nexus policies in African governance, to examine how to best create urgency on these fundamental issues, and compare approaches used in sectoral planning.

The nexus issues are at the core of Africa's long-term development. Respecting the work of others, and given existing but limited capacities in each of the three focal areas within the nexus (agriculture, population and natural resources) we must define our comparative advantage. As you will see in the write-up of this theme in the paper I just mentioned ("Serving Africa Better"), the nexus covers a number of complicated questions, so selectively is important. The advice of this Conference on what our emphases should be in the nexus area will be particularly useful at this juncture.

The third theme is Strengthening development management. This entails our future work on fostering an effective public sector, promoting private sector development and promoting popular participation in development. We build on well-established efforts in each of these three areas. The common thread in weaving these three areas together is that each requires basic governmental policies and practices to foster the public good: better civil services, an enabling environment for the private sector and a fostering environment for civil society call for common skills in policy analysis, capacity building, sharing of best practices, and networking. ECA is mandated by the UN Special Initiative on Africa to play leading roles in the areas of governance, fostering civil society and fostering the informal sector. We are bringing communities together to encourage investment in Africa and to encourage foreign trade. This said: a current reading from the Conference on areas of greatest interest and potential emphasis would be helpful.

The fourth theme is Harnessing information for development. This theme will entail an expansion of our work on development information systems, statistical development, dissemination of information within Africa and promoting information on Africa's development here and abroad. We all agree that this is a theme area for heavy emphasis. The planning of our work within this theme has been foreseen by this Conference in its resolution in last year's Conference of Ministers mandating a team of experts to create an Action Plan in this area. As you know, that Plan will before this conference for adoption. Our work in this theme area will operate within the approved Plan. Thus for a number of good reasons we look forward to the discussion of the Action Plan in TEPCOW and we look forward to your recommendations.

The fifth theme is Promoting Regional cooperation and Integration. We will focus our work on implementing the Abuja Treaty, work with sub-regional organizations, and foster linkages in transport and energy. There are three issues within the set of responsibilities in this theme area on which advice would be particularly welcome:

-- First, members of TEPCOW and delegations might well have advice for us on how to best improve our services in the regional integration area, particularly to the building blocks of regionalization, the sub-regional organizations.

-- Second, a major way we assist linkages is through our Multinational Programming and Operational Centres (MULPOCs). I have come to the conclusion that these centres should be strengthened and that more of our services should be operated on a decentralized basis. Are there service principles you would wish us to stress in so doing?

-- Third, as you may know, ECA has been responsible for the sponsorship of thirty institutions around this continent. Clearly there is duplication and clearly a number of these institutions simply are not financially sustainable. The technical work to rationalize these institutions has long been completed. The issue is to find a level of political comfort with the rationalization process. Your creative guidance on this matter is earnestly solicited.

We also will address in our programmes two cross-cutting themes:

-- Gender, to enhance women's participation in economic development will build upon current activities to be a major cross-cutting theme in ECA's work. Actually this is both a cross-cutting theme in our programmes and the focus of specific programmes in our African Centre for Women. We plan to be highly active to help implement the Beijing Plan of Action on this continent. We will be a networker and advocate for women taking more active and leading roles in economic life. We will also emphasize helping to prepare women for leadership roles in development. And we are asked by the Beijing Conference to be active in the area of legal and human rights for women. These are powerful and, we know, sometimes sensitive areas. Having said this, we want to be seen as supportive to your own efforts to integrate women into the development work of your countries. How can we best do this as we address these important concerns?

And the second of the two cross-cutting issues is Capacity Building within Africa, which cuts across all the other programmes. The Framework Agenda on Capacity Building arising from two years of the work of this Conference is immensely helpful as we move to renew our work to help Member Countries. We greatly appreciate this work which sets the stage for what I trust will be a very useful discussion at this meeting.

In presenting to you the proposed ECA programme framework, I have candidly made it clear that the next challenge ahead of us is to be highly focused and selective in what we do within this framework. Not only will the guidance of this conference be useful in a substantive sense, it will be useful in helping to share understanding the necessity of selectivity. If you will, you can help create for us an enabling environment for programme renewal and reform.

C. Changing Modalities

Our renewal intrinsically involves a major shift not only in what we do, but in how we do it. In the past ECA was too dependent upon meetings, written products and traditional technical assistance. In fact, the shear number of reports and meetings was somehow a hallmark of accomplishment for many UN entities, including ECA. This must be, and here I will use the word, revolutionized. ECA must use up-to-date technologies and strive not for output but for impact.

We will strive to expand ECA's comparative advantage as a respected centre for discussion on policy and as a place where thinking and action are brokered. We will become more:

-- a think tank for economic development;

-- a clearing house for best practices;

-- a policy integrator respecting and integrating analyses from a number of fields; and

-- a catalyst for ideas, enabling the best minds we can locate to focus on timely and fundamental issues.

The technical way we operate shall change mightily. There will be:

-- Far more use of electronic products;

-- An overhaul in dissemination practices;

-- Better assurance of country targeting through use of national representatives to help disseminate products and make linkages at the technical levels us, and we will do this while strengthening the absolutely essential relationships which we have with your ambassadors in Addis Ababa to ensure growing policy and political linkages;

-- There will be fewer but more policy-relevant reports, through, for example, publication of shorter policy analysis and house opinion pieces, as well as consolidation of publication series;

-- There will be fewer meetings and those that are held will be oriented for implementable results, and I hope this Conference will be a model in that regard;

-- We will work, as I mentioned, for the rationalization of sponsored institutions;

-- And, as I implied, we are searching for more effective ways to provide technical assistance, including more teaming with local and diaspora resources.

We are clearly cognizant that the modalities we use must become a model of best practice. We are particularly anxious to deploy new modalities designed to bring Africa the best way of doing business in the future.

I mention the modalities issue because it would be very helpful to us to have contributions to our thinking from the Conference on which modalities of ECA's proposed operations are most valued. We face obvious trade-offs so suggestions and even guidance would be useful. Beyond that it would also be useful to receive the honour of the Conference's endorsement not only on what we will do but the major reorientation on how we plan to do our work with you. Such an endorsement will encourage our work and help us gain further needed financial support.

D. Partnership

I should now like to discuss the concept of partnership in ECA's future work. Let me start this topic by noting that ECA, as you well know, is part of the UN and being part of the UN system brings us strengths:

-- We can draw upon a lot of expertise from UN agencies. Indeed, we will be working closer with the strengths in the U.N. family;

-- We are in a leading role in the recently announced United Nations System-wide Special Initiative on Africa, which I co-chair with the Administrator of UNDP. I have just returned from Nairobi where I co-chaired a meeting of the Steering Committee and then presented our progress to the heads of all UN agencies, meeting for the first time on this continent. It is good to be able to periodically bring to the heads of UN agencies the need to mobilize international support for African development and, indeed, it is very unusual for a head of a regional UN commission to address all the UN agency heads on any topic. Not only will we continue this privileged position, we anticipate being given additional responsibilities.

In other words, these are very good times for us to be part of the UN family. On the other hand, there are also other factors. We are a part of the UN Secretariat and thus are part of the UN Headquarters's budget-squeeze where the interplay of rising peacekeeping responsibilities and declining paid-in resources is causing budgetary stringency. We welcome ways to economize and, by all means, do not stint on advice if you perceive ways by which ECA can economize. Nonetheless, the budget problems of the UN are not timely for us. ECA can and will do a lot with its budget, but a good deal of planned capacity building, and the design and implementation of programmes aimed at expanded impacts, cannot be accomplished without partnerships with donors in the West and the East, from foundations for financial support and from intellectual centres of excellence for in-kind partnerships. What is at stake is not our survival, but the quality and added potential impact possible from this unique institution.

We seek a number of types of partnership and I clearly invite both your understanding and your endorsement of the new partnerships we seek particularly since having the Conference endorse our approach to partnership will give added confidence to partners that their work with us is supported by this key Conference.

Partnership is basic to the process of ECA's renewal. The search for long-term partners connotes a shift in strategy in which ECA is less the self-contained producer of work and far more a networker. The aim is to put forward the best possible thinking in ways which leverage the chances for good ideas having impact. I want to reiterate the fact that this shift in strategy is at the very heart of our renewal.

We desire partnerships Within Africa with key intellectual networks so that the work of leading policy thinkers throughout the continent can be better utilized and so that our own work can be intellectually enriched. We are already in discussion with leading continental networks such as the African Economic Research Consortium and environmental groups. We will also work more with nationally located think tanks and policy centres in Africa so that we have more access to knowledge of best practices and so that relationships with member States will be strengthened. With some of these networks we expect mutual interests to be strong enough to permit thinking in terms of strategic alliance in pursuit of both capacity building and programme aims. We invite your advice on how partnerships with your leading national policy centres can best be facilitated.

We desire partnerships to promote South-South cooperation. The national policy and sectoral development experience as well as the investment potential of a number of recently poor countries in Asia and Latin America offer tremendous potential benefit to this continent. I am pleased to report that senior delegations from China, India and Indonesia were active participants in the donor consultation we hosted a few weeks ago. Working with the other regional commissions I expect South-South linkages to be fostered so that we can take up offers, from countries such as I mentioned, to assist Africa.

We desire partnerships with the Donor community. During its 38 years of existence, ECA has enjoyed many partnerships with bilateral and multilateral donor institutions. We hope that as understanding and confidence of ECA grows that partners will move with us from project level support to more programmatic support, perhaps being in mini-consortia to support a theme area.

Let me give you an example of partnership where combines strengths and is leading to concrete results. This June, ECA, the World Bank and the Global Coalition for Africa will hold an international conference on Reviving Private Investment in Africa. The Government of Japan is among the donors providing significant support for this conference. The conference will bring together governmental authorities and private investors from within Africa and from other parts of the world to promote contacts, permit African governments to outline recently adopted more private-sector friendly policies, and to organize investor's forums in infrastructure, financial services, agribusiness and telecommunications. A number of African Heads of State will participate in a round-table with chief executive officers from major corporations. At the conference we will launch an African Capital Markets Forum which will be a multi-country advocacy group that brings together members of stock exchanges, leasing companies, financial institutions and investment funds. Each of the three co-sponsoring organizations is bringing something to the table. We are clear about results and together we will accomplish things difficult to do alone. That is the same spirit with which I come before TEPCOW: together we will accomplish things difficult to do alone.

V. Medium Term Plan

Once you have reviewed, and made your recommendations on our renewal plan, the logic of the proposed Medium Term Plan will be apparent, because the Medium Term Plan is fully congruent with the consolidated Programme framework I have presented to you. The endorsement of the Conference of Ministers of the Medium Term Plan will help us greatly to proceed during the 1998-2001 cycle. Your guidance on priorities will clearly be reflected in our budget to be submitted to carry out the Plan.

I also want you to know that your endorsement of the Renewal and the Medium Term Plan will enable us to rationalize the current 1996-97 programme, to the extent feasible, within the framework. We must carry out this rationalization for three reasons:

-- first, there is an imposed cut to our core budget, common to all parts of the UN Secretariat;

-- second, we are striving for every new efficiency we can locate now and not waiting two years to make the improvements we are capable of making. When I mentioned improvements in modalities I very much had in mind our current biennium as well as later budgets. Under the current biennium we must produce 124 reports to meetings, we are to produce 121 non-recurrent reports and 47 recurrent reports and we must produce 46 meetings, a total of 345 outputs. Obviously we are still spread too thin to have impact. We must focus more.

-- and third, while committed to implement our current main obligations honourably, there are some flexibilities to rationalize our existing programmes to the extent feasible, to reflect this Conference's guidance earlier rather than later and to get a jump-start in our renewal.

The question is how can the rationalization of our current programme best be supervised by this Conference. TEPCOW has options is can consider in this regard. It can recommend that an extraordinary session of the Conference be called into session to review the revised 1996-97 programme. This would be a costly option for us and for your countries. Or, TEPCOW might recommend that the Bureau, acting for the full Conference between conference meetings be mandated to approve a revised 1996-1997 workplan on behalf of the Conference, within the guidance of this meeting. Then ECA will take the revised 1996-97 programme to the General Assembly for their approval

If the Conference so empowers its Bureau, this will expedite our reform and economize on the approval process.

VI. Other Key Agenda Items

Permit me now to review several other items on the Agenda of this meeting of the Conference of Ministers.

A. Part II of the Agenda has three items:

Item # One is a review of Africa's socio-economic development situation and our projections for 1996. I have already mentioned this in the opening of these remarks.

Item # Two is the United Nations System-wide Special Initiative on Africa. Here I would hope the spotlight will be on the great potential to Africa of this Special Initiative and, as well, the need for serious national planning if your countries wish to take advantage of the major components in the Special Initiative, particularly basic education, health and household water supplies. The full report on the Special initiative has been circulated to you as a Conference document. You will see that the Special Initiative consists of major programmes, a set of projects, some Africa-centred reforms in the way donors approach assistance, and a one-year mobilization of political commitment and support for Africa. The Special Initiative is, in effect, the opertionalization of the UN-NADAF which, as you know, has an implementing Task Force which ECA coordinates. Thus the two UN actions are brought together in ECA.

Over the past weekend the Steering Committee of the Special Initiative met. I Co-chaired that meeting as well as reported to a meeting two days later of the heads of all UN agencies (including the Bretton Woods Institutions) on the results of the Steering Committee deliberations. As a result of these meetings I believe there is more commitment than ever to make sure that the Special Initiative results in concrete actions and not mere promises. I feel certain that key UN agencies, such as the World Bank, UNDP, WHO and UNESCO will help countries do the necessary planning to take advantage of the major monies to be mobilized for the Special Initiative. ECA will also do its part in helping keep the whole Initiative on track (and here our responsibilities will probably increase over the next year) and in mobilizing specific elements of the Special Initiative, particularly relating to informatics (where we share the lead with the World Bank) and assistance to help in the areas of peace-building and civil society. For your background, at our instigation part of the Special Initiative includes a special provision to create a trust fund to permit a reliable and adequate source of finance to OAU's peace-building activities. This is another new instance of solidarity with our regional sister institutions.

I will brief the Ministers more on the Special Initiative and how your countries can take advantage of it. In the meantime, I ask TEPCOW to help your ministers and governments to build interest in the Special Initiative to assure that Africa does its full part to benefit from this unusual offer of solidarity from the international community. If you feel there are extra efforts the UN should be making on its side, that also can be a useful form of advice from this group.

The third item under agenda II is Exploiting Information Technology. This brings for the endorsement of the Conference an Action Plan which is close to my heart. A growing number of us recognize the enormous potential for Africa from the information revolution. Africa could leapfrog years of development if it joins the information age. We have a chance at this Conference of Ministers to agree on a responsible framework for action on this continent which has had major involvement of African interests, including from ECA, for growing the information revolution on this continent. As I mentioned earlier, we deeply appreciate the excellent work of the Conference and its team of experts in preparing this excellent agenda item. The leader of the team of experts is with us for these discussions.

B. Part III of the Agenda has two very useful items:

First, is on the topic of follow-up to international and regional conferences. On this item you will find the U.N. far more organized than in the past. All UN agency heads now see the follow-up to conferences in a far more integrated way, where we try to avoid duplicative follow-up assignments when a similar conference action has been repeated conference after conference. At the just concluded meeting of UN agency heads there was further endorsement and progress reporting on this integrated approach. We may well be inspired by this at the regional level.

The Second item under Part III 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 a of a new era of collaboration which OAU Secretary-General Salim Salim and I are leading for our two institutions. While the report is important, we hope to have a lot more to report to you in coming sessions. You may well be in an excellent position to advise on how the reporting on this key item could be best handled for improved efficiency. It has not passed any of us by that this Conference gets a report from us and then often the same individuals are called into session by OAU awhile later to receive virtually the same report. But, over and above a question of finding more efficient channels of reporting is the substance itself. Here, we simply must make better progress in having the joint secretariat move the Abuja process forward faster. We have made some progress, but I, for one, do not want to act on this matter as if heaven had arrived on earth. The guidance of the Conference on issues the joint secretariat should be addressing to move us more quickly along would be welcome. It is essential that OAU be part of these considerations. So with OAU, ECA, ADB and this Conference combining its wisdoms, perhaps we can together set in motion an improvement of the substantive work and the procedural review of our joint responsibilities.

C. Part IV of the Agenda concerns Statutory Issues.

These issues include a progress report on our important On-Going Programmes. We do have on-going responsibilities and we are working hard not to neglect them despite the difficult budget situation of the UN and our necessary renewal. Comments of Conference participants on our progress are welcome.

The Conference will also consider a number of resolutions from subsidiary bodies and in doing so I again urge us to focus on the essential. As you know, I am new to the Commission and to some aspects of regional resolution-making. In order to understand the business better, I have begun an analysis of the 105 resolutions adopted by this Conference in the past five years just to understand what has actually been accomplished. While the analysis has not yet been completed, the indications are that it will not be the best report card that you and I have ever received. At least we can say that at this meeting we have 13 resolutions from 6 subsidiary bodies to consider, plus two information items. There has been progress in recent years in slimming down the resolution business. I also recognize that two of the meetings reporting to this Conference were first time gatherings of ministers in areas where cooperation is welcome. Nonetheless, can we truly say that all facets of these resolutions before us are actionable? Can we really believe that African states are waiting to act on most of these matters if only this Conference gives its endorsement? Can we not do better? If I may, I would like to recommend to TEPCOW that these resolutions be screened to reduce the number recommendations to the necessary and the actionable. In so doing you will raise the level of the relevance of this Conference.

Having raised these questions, I want to be even a bit more audacious by saying that I do not come to you with a recommended solution. Perhaps we should do as the UN agency heads have done by trying to consolidate actions into more comprehensible and simpler plans. Perhaps this Conference wants to send a few messages back to subsidiary conferences to be a bit more careful with what they recommend. Or perhaps this Conference would like to establish a mechanism to review the whole way we conduct parliamentary business with a view to simplifying calendars and guiding the results to better stand the tests of plausibility and the probability of real action taking place. All I can assure you is that if this Conference decides to examine the regional parliamentary process, ECA will be a most willing partner to assist your work, for example, by backstopping the analysis and by trying to learn best practices from within Africa and from other parts of the world.

Under this agenda item you will also find a progress report on evaluation at ECA. I merely wish to comment that we are re-engineering our systems to be far more transparent and accountable. Programmes will be designed not to produce paper or meetings, but to produce results of value to Africa. I hasten to say that I do not minimize the numerous past accomplishments of ECA, but our management changes signal a significantly different way of doing business, one that should make for better use of resources and for far more accountability to the Conference of Ministers.

VI. Special Events

Finally in this review of the Conference agenda, you will find in the agenda a number of special events. In putting these event into our agenda, I have been inspired by the President of ECOSOC who has been working hard to better tap the intellectual talents present at ECOSOC meetings. For example he organized very useful high level panel discussions as part of ECOSOC's meetings in Geneva last July. I, too, want to see if together the Ministers and ECA can make the best possible use of our time together.

We are arranging an opening address by an outstanding international figure.

There will be a panel discussion in TEPCOW by leading experts on the topic: Framework Agenda for Building and Utilizing Critical Capacities in Africa. This is a very important topic and we will cover it in an innovative way. This discussion should also prove useful as an input to the up-coming meeting on this topic between Africa's ministers of finance and the World Bank's president pursuant to a request by the ministers.

By being aware of both discussions, ECA hopes to assist in achieving a harmonized approach with the Bank, UNDP and other relevant groups.

Also there will be a panel during the Conference on the important topic of Poverty and Public Expenditures. This panel will include leading international figures and I hope that it will encourage some reactions by the conferees.

You may well wish to advise us individually after the conference on how you saw the usefulness of such special events.

VII. Summary

As I commenced these remarks I indicated that I am new to these precincts, but I confess that I have spoken so long that it would seem I am a veteran of these meetings! Forgive me, but I want you to have a full understanding of the new ECA and a new viewpoint at ECA focusing on productivity, impact and the efficiency of one of the most precious of Africa's resources, the time of its leaders.

As you work these next days, I look forward to your advice not only on how to run this Conference better than it ever has been, but how such Conferences in the future can be improved even more. It is in this spirit of shared desires to make this Conference work well, of partnership with you in fostering a renewed and ever more valuable ECA, and of opportunity to find new ways of furthering Africa's development progress that I end in the hope that we not only succeed brilliantly in this Conference but that we lay the basis for excellent collaboration in Conferences ahead. What else is there to say except to thank you very much for the opportunity of delivering these remarks, to express support to you for all you have in front of you, and to wish you Godspeed in all that you do to make this Conference a memorable success.