Third Meeting of UN Water Africa

Opening Remarks by Josué Dioné, Chairman of UN Water/Africa

22-24 March 2005
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Dear Colleagues

Let me first extend to all of you a warm welcome to Addis Ababa and to the 11^th formal Session of our group, and the 3^rd since its baptism as UN Water/Africa. I am indeed pleased and heartened to note that more agencies have been able to attend this Session than the last one held in April 2004, just prior to CSD-12. We still need to work harder to get all the other members on board, especially at this beginning of the International Decade for Action: " Water for Life", which was just launched by the Secretary General Mr. Kofi Annan.

This Session marks the end of my two-year tenure as Chairperson, and I would like to take this opportunity to take stock of the achievements, constraints and challenges, which we collectively face, in the coming biennium.

First however, I wish to thank all of you for the support you have kindly extended to our Vice-Chairman, Mr. Sékou Touré of UNEP, who unfortunately could not be here today, and myself in carrying out the agenda we set in Nairobi. It is now time to hand over the responsibilities of chairing to the next other member institutions to ensure active involvement and ownership by all.

Water is Life.

As John Kennedy stated during his short life,

" Anyone who can solve the problem of water will be worthy of two Nobel prizes- one for peace and the other for science."

This reflects the aspirations of all United Nations institutions organized as UN Water/Africa. Whether we are worth a prize depends on what we seek to achieve and how we set about achieving it. What we must achieve has been set out in all the fora leading up to the Pan African Implementation and Partnership Conference on Water (PANAFCON).

What progress have we made since our seminal meeting two years ago in Nairobi?

It is my pleasure to inform you that most of the objectives we set out in Nairobi have been achieved as reported at our last meeting in April 2004.

• We have established strong linkages with global and regional processes such as the UN Regional Consultative mechanism, the African Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW), the African Union, UN water Global and the African Water Task Force (AWTF).

• We have defined the types of membership of our organization and will need to broaden participation in our activities for non-actors in the water sector in Africa. This will be inline with the mandate given to UN Water by the Chief Executives Board (CEB).

• We worked successfully with the AWTF and AMCOW to organize Africa Sessions at both the 3^rd World Water Forum and the 12^th Session of the CSD.

• The PANAFCON was acclaimed as an overwhelming success and an innovative example of multi-stakeholder dialogue, the outcomes of which will set the agenda for the coming Decade. We must remain committed to acting collectively to support the implementation of these outcomes by African states.

• Our Task Manger System has been in place, even though its functioning could be qualified as mixed and needing to be strengthened.

• The PANAFCON Trust Fund set up for the Conference has gone on to serve other purposes such as the International Groundwater Conference, Communication Support for the UNEP Governing Council in Jeju, as well as various meetings of AMCOW.

• Of the major deliverables we have made progress on:

• The development of the African Water Information Clearing House (AWICH) with the website set up and four Subregional Workshops completed for West, Southern, Easter and Central Africa. Networks to support further development of the AWICH have been initiated.

• The Africa Water Development Report, of which an interim form was released, based on 10 country reports, for the PANAFCON. Since then 20 country reports have been commissioned most of which will be completed by the end of this month. A final report is schedule to be released by September 2005.

• The African Water Journal, of which we released a Pilot edition. We have so far mobilized many Reviewers across Africa who have volunteered to review incoming articles. Progress towards forming the Editorial Board, however, has been slow, owing mainly to the process of wide consultations with all concerned stakeholders.

Dear Colleagues and friends,

These are signs of progress that we can build on. Yet, depending on how we look at the situation, one may see a partly full or partly empty bottle.

Looking at it either way should provide ground and opportunities for constructive efforts in moving ahead, through a cumulative learning and building process by doing better and more to fill whatever void might be detected in light of the experience and lessons of the first biennium of UN Water/Africa.

So, let's not shy away from pointing out from our different perspectives, what has worked reasonably well and where and how things should be fixed or re-crafted to keep us moving along, collectively.

To identify constraints and challenges facing our group, it is worth recalling the outcomes of the comprehensive review we carried out prior to the 9^th Session of IGWA. Some of the weaknesses recognized in the process were:

(a) Lack of means to translate commitments into action due to lack of resources;

(b) Ineffectiveness in incorporating decisions made into the regular programmes of the various agencies;

(c) Lack of Common Vision of the major strategic problems and actions required for their structures;

(d) Tendency to pay lip service to inter-agency cooperation whilst engaging in ineffectual and self-defeating competition for resources, credit and public relations advantage;

(e) Excessive multiple bureaucratic red tape and infighting, sometimes based on personal competition to gain credit for the few joint activities undertaken.

Over the last two years, we have learned to transcend these weaknesses to a large extent. Yet, our challenge for the coming two years is to do away with the same weaknesses, which may re-emerge if we do not fully acknowledge and pay due credit to our recent history.

As Sékou and myself hand over the Chair to incoming member agencies we will elect or select, I will entreat all members to dedicate themselves to our collectivity, even and especially when the natural propensity to wear our individual caps seems irresistibly tempting.

It has been a pleasure and invaluable learning experience, often exciting and rewarding, serving as your Chairman. I reiterate my sincere thanks to you for your support and cooperation during this first tenure of UN Water/Africa, and I hope and know we can count on you to extend the same to our successors.