Employment Key to Poverty Reduction says Amoako
By Cristina Muller, ESPD/ECA, 01 October 2004

In a message to African heads of state ECA’s Executive Secretary KY Amoako said that employment creation is key to resolving the issue of poverty reduction in Africa, and part of the path towards achieving Millennium Development Goals.

Mr. Amoako represented United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan by special invitation at the African Union’s (AU) Extraordinary Summit of Heads of State and Government on Employment and Poverty Alleviation in Africa, held on 8 and 9 September, in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso.

In his address to African heads of state, Mr Amoako praised the summit as a timely initiative, given the urgency of overcoming obstacles in attaining the Millenium Development Goals.

“It is crucial that African governments adopt strategies that contain a sound employment agenda that encompasses both social and structural policies,” said Mr Amoako.

During the preparatory conference to the AU summit, held one week before the Heads of State meeting, ECA was invited to present a paper entitled “Macroeconomic Policy and Poverty Reduction”.

Presented by ECA’s Senior Economic Affairs Officer, Emmanuel Nnadozie, the paper tackles the issue of economic policies that prioritize growth, employment and a more equitable income distribution as the main tools of poverty alleviation.

“The fact is that 60 million more people in sub-Saharan Africa are living on less than $1 per day since 1990, which makes poverty reduction one of the most important challenges for Africa in the twenty-first century,” said Mr Nnadozie.

With a PhD in Economics from the Sorbonne, in France, Mr Nnadozie joined ECA in June from the Department of Economics of Truman State University, Missouri, in the United States.

He said that Africa’s prolonged periods of weak growth and persistently high rates of poverty indicate that there are inadequacies in the macroeconomic scenario: macroeconomic policy has not played its appropriate role in African countries.

In his paper, Mr Nnadozie gives historical reasons for Africa’s slow performance. Even so, he said that African policymakers and international partners could do more to improve the overall picture.

“The solution is not contained in one single action.To resolve this historical issue, a combination of factors must be taken into account, which include macroeconomic policy implementation that helps Africa escape from the stabilization trap, pro-poor sustainable growth, stability, and employment promotion, among others,” said Mr Nnadozie.

In addition, policy must be viable and relevant to the situation of each African country, and associated with long-term objectives and involvement of people at all levels in conception and formulation, he concluded.