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| Archives Speeches and Writings for 1999 Report on Regional Cooperation Geneva 21 July 1999 Mr President, I welcome the opportunity to participate, once again, in the annual ECOSOC discussion of the work of the regional commissions and review of the economic and social trends in each of the regions of the world. The report of the Secretary General on regional co-operation and the Annual Report on the work of ECA are before you. They highlight the key activities undertaken by ECA in the past year. You will recall that at my previous presentation to this body, I emphasized the nature of the reforms we were carrying out at ECA in order to assist our member States to respond to their development challenges in a more effective manner. Permit me, Mr. Chairman to express my appreciation for the support and encouragement we received from ECOSOC and the Commission in implementing these reforms At its 33rd Meeting, in Addis Ababa in May this year, the Commission noted that the reform and renewal process, which began in 1996, was almost complete. It concluded that the General Assembly instructions in resolutions 50/227 of 1996, and 52/12B of 1997, instructing the regional commissions to rationalise their operations, had been carried out. Noting that there was now evidence of significant improvement in the impact of ECA's services to member States, the meeting also noted that the reforms had begun to yield tangible results. Recent outputs, among them the 1998 Economic Report on Africa and the documentation and processes associated with the Joint Conference of the Ministers of Finance and Economic Planning, have been cited as tangible evidence of this improvement. [With the reforms and improved internal capacity, ECA has used its comparative advantage, including its convening power, to:
As I pointed out two days ago, we at ECA are very much aware of the strong linkages between the issues identified in the report of the UN Secretary General on the “The Causes of Conflict and the Promotion of Durable Peace and Sustainable Development in Africa" and the development challenges underlying the ECA programmes. ECA has articulated these challenges, as well as its responses, in a new publication entitled The ECA and Africa: Accelerating a Continent’s Development. Furthermore, it has discussed these challenges extensively with its member States. Permit me, Mr. Chairman, to focus on a few activities that ECA is undertaking, in partnership with its development partners, to assist in addressing the challenges in question. As we enter the next millennium, the
underlying feature of the challenges Africa faces is poverty, and its reduction must be
the ultimate goal of development activities in the continent. The widespread and
deep-seated poverty in Africa has major policy dimensions. To reduce poverty in Africa by
half by the year 2015 (a goal ratified at the World Summit for Social Development in 1995
and endorsed by African Heads of State and Government) will require a 4 percent reduction
each year in the number of people living in absolute poverty. This in turn depends on the
successful implementation of broad social and economic policy measures, sustained GDP
growth rates of at least 7 percent per annum, equitable sharing of the benefits of growth,
and investment rates of more than 30 percent of GDP. This compares to the present 16
percent, and to 25 per cent in East Asia. On the basis of current experience and research a consensus has emerged that Africa's policy and reform agenda need to focus on the following elements:
What has ECA been doing, and what does it plan to do to assist member States in meeting these challenges? I will not review the list of all new programme initiatives in support of these efforts. But I would like to refer to a few—the challenge of financing development, which underlies all the above-listed challenges, the issues of priorities for development and consensus-building around those priorities, and the imperatives of globalisation and regional integration for Africa. The Challenge of Resource Flows: Against the challenge of inadequate and diminishing resource flows for development financing, the Commission convened a Joint Conference of African Ministers of Economic Planning and of Finance in May 1999 under the theme, "The Challenges of Financing development in Africa". An important outcome of the Conference was the Ministerial Debate, which was informed by top researchers and practitioners in this field. And the Joint Ministerial Statement, which articulated Africa's views on the inter-related issues of Official Development Assistance, debt, foreign direct investment, domestic resource mobilisation, capital flight from Africa and reform of the international financial architecture. Debt relief as a key element in the financing plan was the high point of the debate and recommendations emerging from it. The Ministers urged industrial countries, particularly the G-7 nations, to take the lead in agreeing to complete cancellation of debt arising from bilateral aid for the poorest countries, reduce all other bilateral debt of the poorest countries by at least 90 percent, review the HIPC Initiative to enable more countries to benefit from debt relief, and to substantially increase funding for the Initiative. The ministers emphasised the need to foster a new donor-beneficiary relationship whereby multi-donor programmes focus on an African-driven agenda. They also stressed the importance of adequate representation of Africa and its views on all international intergovernmental bodies that may be set up to consider reforms of the international financial and monetary system. This common position was transmitted to the June 1999 G-7 summit in Cologne. As a follow up to the Ministerial statement and the Cologne Debt Initiative, ECA will be co-sponsoring with the World Bank and the IMF, a seminar to review the HIPC Initiative, with a view to ensuring that savings realised from debt relief initiatives are channelled into programmes for sustainable poverty reduction. African countries consider the HIPC initiative important as a means of providing them with a clear exit from unsustainable debts that has constrained their performance. Consensus building and Africa’s leadership on critical elements of Africa’s development agenda: ECA is launching the African Development Forum (ADF) process. This process will foster heightened leadership of the continent's development agenda by Africans, facilitate consensus-building among the key stakeholders in Africa's development, and foster partnerships which respond to a vision of development shared by Africa's stakeholders. ADF is designed to bring more cohesion in donor support for Africa's development. The annual forum will define time-bound actionable programmes that can be implemented within the capacity of African countries. The first forum, whose theme is "The Challenge to Africa of Globalization and the Information Age", will take place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 25-28 October 1999. Among other things, it will showcase the partnership that has developed over the last few years among public-and private-sector interests, UN agencies and the World Bank for the promotion of information and communication technologies in Africa under the coordination of ECA. In addition, African countries will present national action plans to accelerate their information and communications infrastructures for implementation in the year 2000 with assistance from ECA and its partners. Globalization and the regional integration imperative: Globalization and liberalization of the world economy, greater integration of financial and capital markets, and a shift towards the creation of large trading and economic blocs are realities Africa has to face. These developments offer not only challenges and opportunities to Africa, but also point to the need to sharpen its regional integration strategy. Africa's economic recovery and development, as well as its ability to be effectively integrated into the world economy, are intrinsically linked to its capacity to become an active player in the world economy. The two imperatives are interdependent and should be pursued in parallel. Thus, at ECA, we continue to emphasize the promotion of regional economic integration as a fundamental pre-requisite for Africa’s development. Indeed, ECA has a major sub-programme devoted to fostering regional cooperation and integration. In cooperation with the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the African Development Bank (ADB), under the Joint Secretariat of the AEC, ECA is supporting the implementation of the Abuja Treaty. To achieve the goal of regional integration, ECA has strengthened its Sub Regional Development Centres (SRDCs) to provide technical support to the Regional Economic Communities (RECs), while strengthening ECA's outreach in the sub-regions. In this context, ECA has provided assistance in the restructuring of the secretariats of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA); undertaken feasibility studies on self-financing mechanisms for COMESA, which, in due course, will be extended to SADC; and also assisted in re-launching the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS). Particular emphasis has also been laid on Africa's position in world trade through analysis of the implications of the post-Uruguay-round economic and trading arrangements on the region's development. As I speak, Africa experts are meeting in Addis Ababa under the auspices of ECA and the OAU to prepare for the WTO Ministerial meeting in Seattle in November 1999. Conclusion: In concluding my remarks, I want to emphasize that Africa is poised to enter the 21st century, with greater commitment to meeting its development challenges, including good governance and democracy. We consider the deliberations on African development initiatives at the coordination segment of ECOSOC that ended yesterday and the discussion of today, in the context of the item of regional cooperation, to be extremely valuable and useful. It is in this context that ECA will continue to play its part -- through the Special Initiative on Africa and the annual regional coordination meetings of UN agencies -- in fostering coherence towards enhanced impact of the UN on Africa's development. Thank you.
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