UNSIA Newsletter Issue 1, December 1997
UNSIA Moves Out of the Crossroads
by
Gus Speth,
UNDP Administrator
and
K.Y. Amoako,
ECA Executive Secretary
Welcome to the first edition of the SIA newsletter.
We at UNDP and ECA, as co-secretariats of the SIA, aim to use this vehicle to keep you informed about the Special Initiative on Africa (SIA). We see it as a joint project between all of the UN agencies. This is your newsletter for sharing ideas, reporting on achievements and accomplishments, and for bringing to our attention the challenges and opportunities you face.
In the year-and-a-half since the Special Initiative was launched by the heads of all UN agencies, much has taken place, and we have needed an orderly way to communicate on this. This newsletter fills an important need to be both public record and to help bring parties together for the many jointly agreed upon tasks in support of Africa’s development under SIA’s umbrella.
In this communication to the wider UN and African families, we will be candid. First, we agree that launching the SIA was the right thing to do. In every global summit of the last decade, the UN was told to make Africa its top development priority. The SIA is an orderly response to that request.
While the SIA is not the whole answer to Africa’s development… that of course, is in the hands of Africa…it is the best blueprint ever drawn up of what the UN can best do to help as Africans seize opportunities for development. The SIA holds the promise of more effective UN assistance to Africa, more focus, and a concentration on really key tasks.
Second, there has been a lot of progress in these last 18 months. Coordination is improving as UN agencies and others set joint priorities in a number of areas. At ECA, we are particularly pleased with the rapid pace at which coordinated work on informatics has taken place with obvious impacts across Africa. It is also pleasing that sectoral programmes in basic education and health are coming together in a number of countries.
People ask if the Special Initiative is alive, and the answer is: it is. This newsletter will record its extensive living work.
Third, stating that SIA is alive is not saying that it is living up to its potential. It is not. If the rationale of working together and of concentration on key priority doable tasks is still valid, and it certainly is, then we in the UN have a special obligation to ask whether we are doing all we can to carry out our jointly declared plans.
This Special Initiative is a long-term commitment to Africa. It has been endorsed by the past and current UN Secretary General and by all the leaders of the UN system, including the Bretton Woods Institutions. It is a regular feature on the collective agenda of the UN system and a practical mechanism to achieve the objectives of the UN New Agenda for the Development of Africa in the 1990's (UN-NADAF). The unique confluence of interest, agreement, and commitment requires more determined implementation efforts.
While we in the UN are hurting for resources, there is both the commitment of the World Bank to mobilize resources for the key sectoral programmes and of the UN agencies to integrate the Special Initiative’s priorities more deeply into UN agency budgets.
Fourth, at the same time, African citizens have a right and maybe an obligation to also be introspective. We need to ask ourselves whether we are doing all we can to take advantage of what has been offered in the Special Initiative. Are we doing everything we could to assure that plans are being formulated for universal basic education in our countries within a decade or surely within a generation, and are we preparing for very widely available basic health services, to mention but the two largest commitments in the Special Initiative?
In essence, the UN family in key sectors has said we will help significantly to assure the supply if there is an articulated demand. There is work to be done on both sides of this equation.
In future issues of this newsletter, we will present a comprehensive picture of progress across the Special Initiative. For the largest programme elements (education, health, water), we will attempt to report SIA action for the three main country situations: those countries which are implementing comprehensive sectoral investment programmes, those countries which are preparing such programmes, and those countries which are strengthening their human resources and institutions so that they can prepare and manage such programmes.
For the many smaller programmes and projects in the Special Initiative, we will publish an honest scorecard on where they stand. This newsletter, then, will strive to report on where we are vis-à-vis where we should be. We invite your readership, comments, articles, progress reports, and yes, your encouragement.
The UN’s System-wide Special Initiative on Africa is too important to Africa and to the history of the UN not to move briskly. Let us journey together. v