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Opening address by
K.Y.Amoako
UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the
Economic Commission for Africa
THE FIRST ANNUAL AFRICA GOVERNANCE FORUM
11-12 July 1997
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Opening the Forum, Mr. K.Y. Amoako, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, described the meeting as an inaugural effort to launch an annual round of conferences on governance in Africa that would bring together African Governments and their external partners in a consensus building dialogue.

He reminded the participants that UNSIA was a 10-year plan launched by the United Nations in March 1996 to coordinate, leverage, and consolidate the work of the entire UN system, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, in Africa. It had evolved, in part, from the Cairo Agenda for Action adopted by a 1995 summit of African Heads of State and had come to form the implementation mechanism of the UN New Agenda for Development of Africa in the 1990s (NADAF). The Initiative, was designed, inter alia, to:

• focus on Africa’s priorities; governance, peace stability, and development, and mobilize resources to implement these priorities;

• identify and develop practical and coordinated programmes through which UN agencies, in honouring the long-standing and sustainable UN commitment to Africa, take into account the major development conferences that preceded the Initiative;

• assist Africa’s nations to expand capacity for transparent, reliable, and effective governance;

• aid African civil society to establish the capacity to contribute to national development, including peace building; and

• add momentum to the economic and social gains that the continent has been experiencing in the 1990s.

Summing up the underlying philosophy of UNSIA, the Executive Secretary affirmed that in Africa, as elsewhere in the world, good governance fostered social and economic progress, which, in turn, helped sustain good governance.

This Forum was designed to advance progress achieved through many ongoing reforms including constitutions, judiciaries, decentralization, and restructuring of civil service. Such changes would make the reform process and political liberalization irreversible. Further, through greater coordination at the country level, the mobilization of resources in support of governance programmes could become more predictable.

The importance of this Forum, the Executive Director concluded, was amplified by the level of African participation reflected by the presence of the Prime Minister of Togo, Mr. Kwassi Klutse, and other Ministers and senior officials from 14 African countries.