Excellency, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi;
Excellency, the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, Louise Fréchette;
Excellency, the Secretary General of the Organization of African Unity, Salim Ahmed Salim;
Vice President Finance and Planning of the African Development Bank, Ahmed Bahgat;
Honourable Ministers;
Excellencies;
Distinguished Participants and Guests;
Before my brief opening remarks as chairman of this Forum, I would like to ask all of us to observe a minute of silence in honor of a great man who has passed, one of the best loved persons of modern history, a person who will forever be associated with independence, unity, social commitment, humility and integrity, Julius Nyerere, Africa's Mwalimu. Let us stand in silence. ((one minute of silence))
Thank you. Please be seated.
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I would like to welcome all of you to this historic occasion. I am particularly pleased by the level of seniority in this distinquished Forum and in this regard I would like to extend a special welcome to H.E. the Vice President of Malawi, Mr. Justin Malewezi.
I would now like to introduce you to this new Forum.
ECA, OAU and ADB, working in partnership with other African and international organizations, believe that the most important issues facing Africa require more than training seminars, more than workshops, more than isolated research.
The challenges and opportunities for Africa's development are great enough to require a more ambitious approach to the policy process.
We in policy work ought to pass four tests of effectiveness:
(1) Are we on the right topics;
(2) Are we supported sufficiently to address those topics;
(3) Are the results useful; and,
(4) Are the results being used?
It would be good if we had an easy way of tracking the African policy community to see how these tests were being met.
Let me offer four observations about the state of policy analysis and application in Africa:
First: No policy center is big enough to know the whole picture… to be self-sufficient. We all need alliance and networking.
Second: Both officials and policy analysts have consistently observed that policy experience must be shared… across sectors, and across the boundaries of academia and policy circles. Specifically, insights must be shared from economic, political, social, and management sciences. And we must understand the public policy implications of technology and hard science.
Third: Policy makers have said that they value learning from relevant experiences, and to them the most impressive evidence we can present in favor of a policy is successful experience with that policy. And
Fourth: We in Africa need to take the time, and the resources, to do this. No one can do this for us. Africa must have its own answers, its own policy dynamics…just as is the case of every other region.
Policy analysis in Africa is a growing business. Policy leaders can now be found in all sectors, not only governments. Indeed, business, civil society, media and academia are concerned about policy. You are here because of your larger policy interests. This Forum well represents the diverse, rapidly growing policy community of Africa.
Despite its growing size, there is a widespread feeling that the policy community in Africa does not have a very efficient process to move fundamental socio-economic matters from issue identification, to fact gathering and sharing of experience, to joint consideration, and to national and even regional policy.
Policy makers across Africa have told us that they would like a more robust policy community, particularly to help leaders face a sometimes overwhelming global economy.
They require something new in the way of high-level policy consultations, a new and far more ambitious Forum in which Africa's policy leadership can meet on fundamental issues, which get acted upon as a result of the Forum.
They also require a style for this Forum which is distinct. The style here reflects the lessons learned in reorienting the ECA over the last few years. These lessons are:
ˇ to work on the most fundamental issues and opportunities facing Africa;
ˇ to gather the brightest minds in Africa on these issues and opportunities; and
ˇ to find the most productive ways of mutual teaching and mutual learning with the brightest minds.
Because of the important diversity of participants in this Forum, we are all afforded a better chance to understand the complexity and range of issues appropriate to the problems we jointly tackle. In fact, building on a lot of experience in working with important stakeholders in Africa's development, we have structured the Forum to include important groups which cross-cut our development future. An example of this is our inclusion of youth.
As you know, the largest generation of youth in Africa's history is alive today. Yet, too many policy leaders tend to see the generation of youth as a problem to be solved. And indeed that generation must survive the threat of HIV/AIDS, lack of educational opportunities and lack of employment opportunities.
Governments seem often either to ignore youth in the expectation that if they wait long enough youth will become middle aged and the (quote) problem (unquote) will be solved; or they delegate youth to a relative backwater in the governmental process.
I suggest a third option: seeing youth as a major asset for Africa's development. It is not the fault of youth if their energies and abilities are unnoticed by policy makers. It is more the fault of a lack of creativity by those of us in the policy community.
Why do I particularly highlight youth in this Forum? Simply because at this Forum we are talking about a coming information age in Africa. That age will be led by youth. I would be willing to wager that within the last week, and certainly within the last year, everyone here over the age of 40 has been taught something about the computer by a young person, or has been connected to an information service run by a young person. We simply cannot talk of an information age in Africa without understanding that young people will be more vital to the success of that development than any other generation. I hope we are wise enough to integrate a youth perspective in these Forums and I am glad we are doing so here, just as we are integrating gender perspectives. Eventually, policy makers will learn how to see issues both with a gender lens and with a generational lens. That is why as a permanent feature, this Forum will include gender and youth leaders. Similarly, because of their cross-cutting importance, we will always include the business and the Diaspora communities.
This amounts to establishing new ways African leaders from a range of sectors, can learn and work together.
Tomorrow morning we will discuss more precisely the outcomes sought in this Forum. Your speakers and panelists have been asked to be both concrete and strategic. They realize that this Forum must address national, sub-regional and regional opportunities. And they have been asked to help specify the most effective partnership models to implement new projects, plans or policies proposed.
There should be a lot of value coming out of this Forum. As you know, we will follow-up this Forum in a number of ways, including organizing a post-Forum Summit Dialogue convening a number of Heads of State and Government to attract their support for the country action plans and recommendations to emerge from this Forum. I also hope that you reflect with us after the Forum on how to improve the next one.
So this Forum is an attempt… and I may say a very ambitious attempt... by a partnering of interests... to organize the African policy community, working in alliance, starting with national experience and ending with national actions, and, over time, covering some of the most fundamental challenges facing Africa's policy-makers. The style and operations of the Forum are distinct and we hope this will be a contribution to improving the health of the policy community at large.