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High-Level Group Meeting to Review a Draft of A Framework Agenda for Building and Utilizing Critical Capacities in AfricaIntroductory
Statement by It is my great pleasure to welcome
you, one and all. I am particularly grateful that you have been able to set aside the time
to respond to our invitation, in spite of the short notice. I take it as a sign of the
large reserve of goodwill that exists, in Africa and beyond, towards the Economic
Commission for Africa and its work. On our part, we are determined to
strengthen the Commission to live up to the expectations and to fulfill its mandate to
promote sustained economic development and social transformation in this continent. We are
reshaping ECA to provide intellectual leadership in the struggle against abject poverty
and want. We are convinced that if African countries galvanize the will and marshal
domestic resources, African society can be freed from poverty by the year 2025. Here
again, is a fertile area where ECA must provide intellectual leadership: bringing Africa
from the periphery of the periphery to the heart of global commerce and finance as a
dynamic emerging market within the next two decades. All this adds up to an ambitious
agenda, but we are not daunted. If Africa is to move, it must re-discover the power of
focused dreams. Ladies and Gentlemen, We invited each one of you
personally, after careful consideration, so that we could profit from your outstanding
expertise, work experience, as well as the perspectives that you bring from the
institutions with which you are associated, and which we hold in high esteem. We intend to
pick your brains and to bounce off you, both the ideas (however rudimentary) and the
questions that have exercised our minds and dominated our internal debates here at ECA in
the last two and a half years that we have focused on the issue of re-launching capacity
building in Africa. This is a fine example of how ECA
intends to tackle specific strategic challenges in Africa's development that we shall
identify in the course of our work. At least those among you who participated in the
January meeting of African experts to review our nascent ideas on renewing this Commission
to serve Africa better will readily recognize our new approach: Once we have polished a
compelling idea from a crude form to a state where it can be reasonably articulated and
presented to a wider external audience, we shall consult external expert opinion to help
us refine our concepts. We shall achieve this by organizing select meetings with focused
agendas -- such as this meeting. But, more and more, we shall obtain the same result
through networking, making the fullest use of modern communications that are feasible in
Africa. We shall use this at least to prepare the ground for face-to-face meetings to make
them even more productive. And we shall nurture and retain the networks when we move into
the stage of translating concepts into policies and action in partnership with the member
States. Ladies and gentlemen, you are
therefore most welcome, and we value your opinion highly. ECA has been pre-occupied with this
issue -- building and utilizing critical capacities in Africa -- since mid-1993. In its
analysis of Africa's development potential in the 1990s, the Commission had come to the
conclusion that the vital missing ingredient whose absence has been responsible for poor
results from past strategies, programmes and plans of action for Africa's development is
adequate indigenous capacities in some critical areas. A think-piece was circulated
in-house which provoked considerable thought and which laid the ground for the proposed
"Framework Agenda for Building and Utilizing Critical Capacities in Africa", a
draft of which is before you. ECA presented its preliminary ideas on this issue to the May 1994 Conference of African Ministers responsible for economic and social development and planning, the Commission's legislative organ. The Ministers gave their enthusiastic support and encouraged ECA to go ahead and elaborate its ideas in a more thorough policy document. It was not possible to complete the task within a year, so an interim report was presented to the Conference of Ministers in May 1995 and we were given a year's extension of the mandate to complete the Framework Agenda. The Conference of Ministers itself guided us in selecting the ten priority areas for this Framework. We promised that before presenting our proposals to the Conference at this year's session in May, we would first sound out our ideas with Africa's eminent experts in all relevant fields as well as sister multilateral agencies and Africa's premier organizations. This High-Level Group Meeting is therefore an important stage in the process towards articulating a collective regional stand on re-launching capacity building. Colleagues, Africa is a continent in the throes
of multiple transitions: from war to peace; from one-party rule to multi-party governance;
from apartheid to non-racial democracy; from command economies dominated by
governments and sheltered from imports to free markets, private enterprise, and liberal
trade. In most countries, there are several of these transitions taking place at the same
time. Africa is on the move. In addition to these, three more transitions need to be
fostered: from unsustainable modes of production to sustainable development; from
isolation behind national boundaries to an integrated continental economic space; and from
male-dominated society, politics and economics to gender equity across the board. All these transitions hold the key
to a brighter and more prosperous future for Africa: a continent with a dynamic society
and economy. To succeed, however, Africa's multiple transitions demand a high level of a
variety of capacities. Take the transition from war to
peace, or from apartheid to non-racial governance. They must be anchored in
reconstruction. But such programmes demand a great deal of managerial competence and
policy-making skills -- in societies where these very skills are likely to have been
decimated or stunted by internecine conflict, genocide and repression. Democracy and good
governance are not possible with a poorly educated, largely illiterate electorate cannot
exercise well-informed political choices. Free markets open to international competition
demand more sophisticated policies and instruments of intervention on the by government.
Private enterprise-led growth can only be sustained in a population where a variety of
productive skills abound, coupled with a productive work ethic and entrepreneurship. Sustainability is impossible as long
as producers remain functionally illiterate and innumerate, with science and technology
beyond their grasp. At the heart of it, gender equity is nothing but equal access to all
essential capacities for women as well as men, boys as well as girls. And a single
continental economic space will not be created without an efficient network of
infrastructures. All these capacities are critical, therefore. And they cannot be built
and put to work without financial mobilization on a large scale and investments on a
prudent and sustained basis. In our view, this is what defines
the scope of the capacity-building agenda for Africa. If the goals are steady progress
towards poverty eradication, sustainable development, social equity, and an Africa fully
integrated into the geo-political and economic order, capacity building must provide the
thrust. It is a very broad agenda, admittedly. But there is room for selecting priorities
and varying the emphases, in line with national strategic and medium-term development
goals and as these shift with electoral cycles in the emerging democratic market of ideas.
In the proposed Framework Agenda, however, ECA has taken the position that it is not for
us to select priorities one .. two .. three for the member States. Rather, we have
prepared a comprehensive menu of capacity-building policy measures and actions that could
be undertaken at the national level, complemented by actions at the regional level, and
supported by actions by international partners. African countries themselves will exercise
ownership and responsibility by choosing just which capacity-building programmes they
want, establishing their own priorities. But it is clear that capacity
building in Africa must involve all the people, in one way or another, if society is to
develop and transform, and if African countries wish to take their place in the integrated
global economy. Creating critical capacities only at the apex, in the hope that these will
then boost productivity at the grass-roots, is likely to be not only ineffective, but it
could widen the gap further between elites and the people at large, while doing little to
address the structural roots of poverty in Africa which is, at heart, people's lack of
capacities. Colleagues, Since capacity building must proceed
simultaneously on many fronts, it cannot depend on government alone. No government could
take on such an enormous task and succeed. The entire population must be involved. Private
enterprise and civil society have great contributions to make. Communities and families
must be directly involved. And all must take the initiative without waiting for government
to prompt or prod them. Therefore government must create and
maintain the right policy environment and political climate for all members of society to
feel empowered to participate -- to enhance their capacities, to improve their lot, to
enrich themselves. The right climate, with the right structure of incentives, will not
only motivate many people to get involved in capacity building. It will also encourage the
full use of all capacities available. And it is the only atmosphere in which capacities
can be retained, maintained and accumulated. A corollary of this is that, to a fair
extent, market forces and competition must be allowed to play their role in allocating
scarce resources optimally to competing claims for capacity building. Generally speaking, the whole
development process in Africa needs to be re-organized and placed within the three
interlocking paradigms of capacity building; sustainability; and equity. That is gender
and social equity between city and rural people, and between generations. The government's
crucial functions are to coordinate independent actors, to leverage their initiatives by
making strategic investments in areas of critical importance to the
"public-good", and to catalyze the process by implementing conducive policies. African Governments need to rebuild
their own institutional capacities to deliver democratic, transparent and accountable
governance that is also competent in its policy-making and delivery of services. A crucial
set of questions will have to be answered: What is the optimum size of government for
Africa's development? How can its workforce of public servants be motivated to be
productive and responsible? And how is the cost of government and its programmes to be
met? Candid answers are needed to all these questions, followed by concrete actions. It is
within this framework that the restructuring of public administration and public-sector
enterprises must be conceived. These are some of the principles
which have emerged from our deliberations here at ECA on this issue. They are the basis
for the proposals put forward in the draft Framework Agenda before you. With your
assistance and constructive criticism, we will put before the our member states a solid
proposal and strategy that will inspire African countries and their development partners. The Framework Agenda is divided into
two parts. Part I, with three short chapters, presents a case for the need to re-launch
capacity building in Africa as we approach the threshold of a new century. It goes on to
outline the broad principles which should underlie African capacity building and a
strategy for implementation. Part II contains ten chapters -- one for each
capacity-building area endorsed by the Conference of Ministers: good governance; human
development; policy analysis and development management; entrepreneurship; physical
infrastructures; food security; natural resources and industry; environment and
development; science and technology; and financial resource mobilization. Even though, in principle, no
attempt has been made to prioritize among these areas, it is not exactly accidental that
the first three are in that order. Governance is a sine qua non for the rest of
capacity building! People are at once the beneficiaries and the architects and builders of
all capacities! And sound policies are a must! But it is also not accidental that we have
placed financial resources last. We consider this to be the life-blood which runs through
all capacity building! Previous strategies adopted for Africa's development, such as the
Lagos Plan of Action, came to naught because countries and external partners did not pay
enough attention to this crucial factor. In this Framework Agenda, it is given a prominent
place and detailed treatment. Colleagues, You may well ask: where do we go
from here? This is an important question which
we hope that Africa's Ministers responsible for development will give serious attention
to. Previous strategies, programmes and initiatives were not successful because this very
question was not given serious consideration; and institutional modalities were not put in
place to monitor progress towards set goals. The capacity building that is envisaged in
the Framework Agenda will need the participation of numerous partners -- national,
regional, bilateral and multilateral. This at once raises the question of coordination for
effectiveness, avoiding needless duplication of efforts. If African countries and their
external partners are serious about capacity building, therefore, an institutional
framework must be established to facilitate resource mobilization, regular consultations,
coordination, monitoring, evaluation, and corrective feed-back. ECA, as the regional arm of the
United Nations, is in a position to take on some of these functions. And we are ready to
lend support to sister institutions whose mandates qualify them for lead roles in other
aspects of this ambitious task. For example, the World Bank and the African Development
Bank are obvious candidates for the financial mobilization dimension. In fact, the World
Bank is in the process of elaborating a programme on capacity building. The initiatives
being made on both sides of the Atlantic present an opportunity for collobaration and
mutual support as we strive to serve our member states - the African countries. The
Organisation of African Unity is the obvious candidate to lead in the dimension of good
governance, security, peace and stability. Already, it has started a neucleus that may
well loom large on the African continent - the Mechanism for Conflict Prevention,
Management and Resolution, which deserves to be nurtured and strengthened. UNDP is in a
position to provide coordination to the efforts and contributions of bilateral and
multilateral partners at the national level, by virtue of its long experience with
capacity building in African countries. We can all work together, and we should be
prepared to sustain our commitment for the long haul. Hon. Vice Minister Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, I am convinced that we stand at a
momentous juncture in the history of our continent. After two decades of economic
stagnation, deepening poverty, social decline, and creeping marginalisation, Africa is
rising to its feet again to get back onto the path of progress and prosperity. Many of our
countries have been implementing sound policies and making sacrifices to restore
macro-economic stability. What is needed is to anchor these policies within the three
mutually supportive paradigms that I have cited: capacity building, sustainability, and
equity. It is a difficult subject that we
have on our hands, and one which could alter the future course of a continent. I am
confident that, with your help, we shall give good advice to Africa's premier policy
makers on development. I thank you. |
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