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UNITED NATIONS SYSTEM WIDE SPECIAL INITIATIVE ON AFRICA
(UNSIA): ONE YEAR LATER
JUNE 1997
BACKGROUND
JUSTIFICATION
The United Nations System-wide Special Initiative on Africa (UNSIA) arose from concern in Africa, and throughout the United Nations System, regarding the loss of development support for the continent at a time when opportunities for development were improving. Africa's call for targeted, accelerated development policies is intended to counter marginalization in the face of globalization. Improvement in the socio-economic situation in many African countries is the result of several years of pursuing economic policy reform, reinforced by the adoption of enlightened governance practices. The ever-increasing benefits in many countries are in stark contrast to areas of lingering conflict.
Yet, overall, Africa remains a continent with 33 Least Developed Countries, (LDCs); the majority of the population, growing at a high annual average rate of 3%, live in poverty. The burden of debt constitutes a serious obstacle to development and limits investment in social sectors. Official Development Assistance (ODA) has decreased substantially, with no corresponding increase in foreign direct investment.
Over the years, the deteriorating socio-economic situation of the continent has been a constant preoccupation for the United Nations, which has launched various initiatives in favour of Africa. The United Nations Programme of Action for African Economic Recovery and Development (UN-PAAERD) and its successor, the United Nations New Agenda for the Development of Africa in the 1990's (UN-NADAF) are the two most recent. Emergence of the UNSIA is the culmination of international efforts to make earlier initiatives more effective in addressing African problems.
The United Nations System-wide Special Initiative on Africa was launched on 15 March 1996, with participation of the Presidents of Ghana and Senegal, the Vice President of Kenya and the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, in his capacity as Chairman of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the UN secretary-general, the President of the World Bank and Heads of several UN organizations. At country level, senior government officials attended launching events organized by Resident Coordinators and United Nations country teams.
OBJECTIVES
In meeting its two broad objectives, identified as reinforcing African leadership and guaranteeing the sustainability of the United Nations system commitment, the Special Initiative on Africa focused on Africa's priorities, derived from the Cairo Agenda for Action, in education, health, water, food security, governance, information technology, poverty-reduction through employment generation, south-south cooperation, debt and trade links with the goals of the major United Nations conferences and other bilateral initiatives. It gives substance to the United Nations system reform, forges stronger operational bonds within the United Nations system and with the Bretton Woods institutions. Above all, it helps to reallocate resources to selected priority areas, especially in the social sectors, reinforces countries' ownership in developing and managing programmes and projects, achieves greater effectiveness in aid and extends the promise for greater coherence in Africa's partnership with the international community.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Overall
One year after the launch, some evidence of progress is emerging. African ownership is booming a reality. The United Nations system is demonstration synergy in implementation, increasingly so at country level.
African leadership and ownership
African leadership was registered by the Health Ministers' embrace of the Special Initiative's framework for health sector reform to improve health service delivery, at the September 1996 WHO Afro-Regional Committee meeting. Education Ministers, acting within the Association for the Development of Education in Africa, endorsed the Initiative, as did the ECA Conference of Ministers on the African Information Society Initiative. Last week, at the OAU Summit in Harare, African Heads of State and Government adopted a resolution in support of the Special Initiative. The move to establish firm linkages between UN-NADAF and UNSIA, illustrating how the latter serves as an implementation mechanism for the former, helps to eliminate earlier doubt about African ownership.
Building support for the Initiative
All African countries are eligible to participate in UNSIS, the scope and content of programme assistance (e.g. sector investment funding, capacity building and advisory services for policy issues), are determined on the basis of consultations with Government, civil society, the United nations system and the donor community.
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs): Consultations with NGOs on different occasions have sought to broaden and deepen African leadership and ownership, ensuring that civil society organizations are fully involved in the partnership intended by the UNSIA: two meetings with NGOs during the mid-term review of UN-NADAF in September 1996; with the United Nations Association of the United Kingdom in November 1996 with representatives of major African NGOs at UNDP in February 1997 and an NGO/CSO regional consultation on governance in Africa, co-sponsored by UNDP and ECA, in Addis Ababa, in May 1997, were all valuable opportunities to spread positive images about the Special Initiative.
Donors:- Donors support for the Special Initiative is crucial for its success. Continuous advocacy in various international fora, donor consultations throughout 1996, notably in Executive Boards, G7 endorsement of the Initiative following the Lyon meeting as the basis for building a new partnership with Africa, complementarity with the OECD/DAC "Shaping the 21st Century" strategy, and with TICAD (the Tokyo International Conference on African Development), are hopeful signs of improvement.
Communication:- A communication strategy is being implemented with two broad objectives: to report on positive and concrete conclusions of the UN Special Initiative on Africa; and to help improve Africa's image, in order to mobilize external support. The strategy draws upon African information and media networks, establishes outreach to donor media, encourages complementarity of information among UN agencies and organizations and strengthens links with African inter-governmental fora such as the OAU.
Sustainability of United Nations System Commitment
United Nations system direction and oversight of the UNSIA is effected through the ACC Steering Committee, attended by senior officials of United Nation entities and the Bretton Woods institutions, co-chaired by the UNDP Administrator and the ECA Executive Secretary, and implemented through a mix of coordinating and cooperating agencies of the United Nations for each priority sector. Agreement has been reached on common implementation approaches, work programmes and resource mobilization strategies in the various priority sectors.
Resource requirement/mobilization
Resources will be generated from external flows to the various priority areas, reallocation of national budgetary resources, through more effective coordination, resulting in predictable, increased disbursement and lower transaction costs to African countries.
Consultative Groups (CGs) and Round Tables (RTs) have been adopted as appropriate resource mobilization mechanisms for sector investment programmes. A number of SIPs in education (Comoros, Ghana, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Zambia), in health (Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Senegal, Eritrea, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, Kenya, Sierra Leone), in water (Ethiopia, Namibia) and in Governance (Cameroon, Senegal, Eritrea, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Swaziland, Togo and Uganda) are in various stages of preparation for presentation to upcoming CGs and RTs. UNDP is utilizing the Norwegian Trust Fund together with its own resources, to support formulation of governance programmes in various countries. These will be presented at the Governance Forum in Addis Ababa, 11-12 July 1997.
COUNTRY-LEVEL IMPLEMENTAITON
One year after launch, implementation of different aspects of the Special Initiative varies from country to country. United Nations country team retreats have served to shape implementation strategies. In most countries, Resident Coordinators and the United Nations country teams are implementing aspects of their cooperation programmes in support of the Special Initiative, while progressively using it as their framework for enhancing harmonization and coordination. For example, in Ethiopia, after the education and health SIPs were presented to donors during the Consultative Group meeting in December 1996, the United Nations country team retreat agreed on common approaches to accelerate the actual implementation of these programmes through capacity-enhancement involving UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank.
Under Government leadership, the Ghana retreat, involving civil society and donor representation, made concrete proposals on how to improve implementation through harmonization of approaches in various aspects of project management, such as reporting, auditing, accounting and pooling of resources.
In Mozambique, at the United Nations country team retreat, the representatives examined how best to harmonize various programme instrumentalities currently utilized by various United Nations entities, such as the Country Strategy Note (CSN), Country Assistance Strategy (CAS), Situation Analysis and Country Cooperation Framework (CCF). They examined and finalized the Common Country Assessment (CCA) which clearly identifies, for each priority area of the Special Initiative, activities benefiting from a coordinated or harmonized approach. Other countries where retreats are being planned before the end of the year include Cape Verde, Mali, Togo and Zimbabwe.
Resolution of policy impediments in the education sector in Senegal has been advanced as a result of utilizing the UNSIA as a framework for actin. Subsequently, UNDP, UNESCO and the World Bank have been collaborating with government in primary education analysis and in resource mobilization through sector investment. Bilateral donor involvement has been evidenced by the coordinated manner in which dialogue is now undertaken.
In the area of governance, the Special Initiative has given real impetus through the formulation of an overall framework for promoting good governance in Africa. Assistance has been rendered in the formulation of national governance programmes in 13 countries, in the coordination and mobilization of resources for activities in peace-building, conflict-resolution and national reconciliation, capacity-building and strengthening of civil society for development.
ECA and UNDP, along with relevant UN cooperating agencies, are preparing an Africa Governance Forum, to be convened 11-12 July 1997, in Addis Ababa. The unique feature of these consultations is that emphasis is being placed on building partnerships around consensus on best practices in governance, through an exchange of information and experience. African Governments and their external partners will aim to coordinate in-country programmes and mobilize resources in a more predictable fashion.
LOOKING FORWARD
Both the sixth ACC Steering Committee and the ACC meetings, held in Geneva in April 1997, recommended that emphasis be placed on increasing the pace of implementation of cluster priorities and on country-level activities. Accordingly, efforts will focus on the following:
Bringing out UNSIA added value through harmonization of various programming instruments and agreement on common implementation arrangements to minimize transaction costs for recipient countries. UN Resident Coordinators and UN country teams are being encouraged to convene retreats and workshops, similar to the ones of Ethiopia, Ghana, and Mozambique, and as planned by a few other countries, in order to share best practices;
All Resident Coordinators are being encouraged to broaden and strengthen dialogue on UNSIA with local authorities and all other stakeholders, including civil society and non-governmental organizations, as well as bilateral donors, to benefit from the additionality of complementarity each can bring, thereby accelerating country-level implementation;
The ACC Steering Committee members have underlined the value-added of these retreats and have insisted that they be replicated in other countries and that they share examples of best practices.
As stated by the Secretary-General on 14 March in New York, "the Special Initiative is one of the best ways in the UN System has devised to encourage the pooling of efforts by the UN and its agencies and organizations to have a greater impact on the ground and to better assist the African countries."
The Special Initiative is also about changing the architecture of donor-recipient country relationships, by promoting African ownership and leadership of the development process. Recent developments show that Africa is at a turning point, with growth rates of more than 5% on average last year, emergency of new leadership and reinforcement of the democratic process and improved stability, despite some exceptions in the Great Lakes region, Horn of Africa and Sierra Leone.
Moving towards a global partnership for Africa
With growing support to promote sustainable human development in Africa, it is timely to work on a global partnership taking advantage of the congruence among bilateral initiatives such as TICAD, the recently announced US initiative on growth opportunity to end dependency, and multilateral strategies, such as OECD/DAC "Shaping the 21st century", the United Nations Special Initiative on Africa and the World Bank/IMF Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative on debt. Some of the areas where partnerships could be fostered are:
UN initiative could serve to catalyze the efforts in several priority areas of UNSIA, such as market access, including diversification of export base; debt reduction, taking into account timely implementation of the HIPC strategy; encouraging efforts relating to bilateral and commercial debt relief; and promotion of direct private investments;
Target poverty alleviation actions could be build around sustainable livelihood efforts of the UN system, coordinated by UNDP;
Ensuring basic social services in Africa, including access to safe drinking water, basic education and health services, could be coordinated in the framework of the Special Initiative, and building partnerships with multilateral and bilateral donors organized in and SPA-type forum. Concrete implementation through specific sector investment programmes could be done at country level using the UN country team as a reservoir for assistance formulation and execution of programmes, led by recipient countries. The resources as well as external flows comparable to the 20/20 concept.
Efforts to assist African countries in promoting good governance for peace and stability, including the rule of law and good economic management, could be coordinated by building on the results of the upcoming UNDP/ECA sponsored forum. Such a partnership, involving African countries, their donor partners and representatives of civil society organizations, could form the basis for annual consultations to coordinate external support for well-articulated and comprehensive programmes, formulated by African countries themselves through a wide participatory approach. In addition to specific discussions on funding requirements, such a forum would serve as a unique opportunity for sharing experiences on good practices. During the most recent ACC meeting in Geneva, the UN Secretary-General remarked, "The effectiveness of the Special Initiative will be judged in terms of its contribution to poverty- reduction and to peace and stability in Africa." An agenda for well-targeted actions to restore hope to Africa's population can be achieved in a partnership among Governments, the United Nations system and bilateral and multilateral donors.
June 1997
UNSIA Secretariat