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Africa: African Development Forum
Africa: African Development Forum
Date distributed (ymd): 991012
Document reposted by APIC
+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
Region: Continent-Wide
Issue Areas: +economy/development+
Summary Contents:
This posting contains a speech in South Africa to the African
Renaissance Insitute by Economic Commission for Africa
Executive Secretary Dr. K. Y. Amoako, discussing the African
Development Forum that will take place in Addis Ababa on
October 24-29, 1999.
For more information on the forum and archives of the on-line
discussion that preceded the forum, see:
http://www.un.org/depts/eca/adf or
http://www.bellanet.org/adf
President Thabo Mbeki's speech on the same occasion is in a
separate posting also sent out today.
+++++++++++++++++end profile++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The African Development Forum -
Dialogue for the African Renaissance
Address by
Dr. K.Y. Amoako,
Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa
On the occasion of the inauguration of the African Renaissance
Institute
Pretoria, South Africa
Monday 11 October 1999
For more information:
Peter K.A. da Costa
Senior Communication Adviser
Economic Commission for Africa (ECA)
United Nations
P.O. Box 3001 (official mail)
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Tel: +251-1-51 58 26
Cell: +251-9-20 17 94
Fax: +251-1-51 03 65
E-Mail: dacosta@un.org;
dacosta@igc.org
Web: http://www.un.org/depts/eca
Your Excellency Mr. Thabo Mbeki, President of the Republic of
South Africa
Your Excellencies, Former African Heads of State and
Government
Your Excellency Dr. Salim Ahmed Salim, Secretary-General of
the Organization of African Unity
Ambassador Kapembe Nsingo, Executive President of the African
Renaissance Institute
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
I am pleased to be with you here in Pretoria today, on this
important occasion of the inauguration of the African
Renaissance Institute. It is an honour for me personally, and
for the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), to address this
gathering. I would like to thank the Institute for inviting me
to speak. This is a most timely initiative, and one that
resonates well with our shared vision of a better future for
Africa's peoples as articulated by President Thabo Mbeki. I
would like to pay tribute for his leadership and for the
eloquence with which he has promoted this vision.
Chairperson
You have asked me to speak on the subject: "The African
Development Forum - Dialogue for the African Renaissance". As
I will relate to you shortly, the African Development Forum,
or ADF process, has been initiated by the Economic Commission
for Africa (ECA) and its partners as a means of fostering
home-grown and African-owned solutions to our development
challenges. We see the ADF as an important tool for concretely
moving forward with the vision of an African renaissance. But
before going into detail about the ADF, let me first say a few
words about the socio-economic dimensions of our renaissance
challenge.
Mr. President, in Sun City in 1995, you stated -- and you have
repeated here today -- that the new century must be Africa's
century. Indeed, how can we claim the 21st Century for
Africa's children? To do so will require that we meet certain
key goals within the next three decades:
- Today, four out of 10 Africans live below the poverty line,
on barely one dollar a day. The goal must be to eradicate
absolute poverty from the continent.
- Today, at least 30 percent of Africans have no access to
medical services, while more than 40 percent of the population
lack access to safe water. The goal must be to ensure
healthcare for all, as well as universal access to water and
sanitation.
- Today, one out of every four African children does not go to
school. Sixteen countries have enrolment rates of less than
60%. The goal must be to ensure that every African child has
access to quality education.
- Today, 14 of the 20 lowest ranked countries in terms of the
gender development index are in Africa. The goal must be to
address gender disparities by removing the constraints that
impede women from reaching their full potential.
- Today, Africans can only expect to live for 51 years, an
average which is declining because of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
The goal must be to raise Africa's life expectancy, to bring
it in line with that of the developed countries.
- Today, high population growth rates have led to rapid
environmental deterioration and undermined agricultural
productivity. The goal must be to achieve a harmonious balance
between population growth and food production, and better
stewardship of the environment.
- Today, more than 20 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa's
population is affected by civil war. The goal must be to
ensure durable peace and sustainable development by addressing
the root causes of conflict, including poverty and deep-seated
inequalities.
- Today, with 53 countries demarcated by 165 borders, Africa
is the most divided continent. The goal must be to promote
regional cooperation and integration, and to make the African
Economic Community a reality.
- Today, Africa is the most marginalized continent in terms of
its global finance and trade. The goal must be to enhance
Africa's international competitiveness so that we can become
an equal player on the global scene.
Chairperson
This renaissance is not a mirage. Indeed, the groundwork for
change has been partly laid. There is a wide recognition of
the problems we face, and a greater consensus within Africa on
the overall direction for the future. As a result of the new
thinking, recent years have seen tangible progress made by
many countries in reforming their economies, and in putting in
place the requisite enabling environment to bring about
equitable growth and poverty reduction. This has resulted in
very encouraging growth rates over the last five years --
Africa's best economic performance since the late 1970s.
Yet these accomplishments cannot be assumed to mean that the
aggregate African economy has crossed the critical threshold
to self-sustaining poverty reduction. To make our vision a
reality, we need to recognize that poverty is
multidimensional, and that its reduction is a long-term effort
requiring sustained capacities in the delivery of essential
social services. Macroeconomic stability and structural
reforms are also essential to move to a higher path of
sustained growth. Broad based participation of civil society
and strengthened governance, including improved budgetary
management and public accountability, are equally important to
the implementation of an effective anti-poverty strategy.
Harnessing our storehouse of intellectual talent and
expertise, be it on the continent or in the Diaspora, is
critical to meeting these challenges. President Mbeki put it
eloquently when he said at Midrand in August 1998 that
"Africa's renewal demands that her intelligentsia must immerse
itself in the titanic and all-round struggle to end poverty,
disease and backwardness".
So what strategies should we employ to enhance the role of
research in promoting African development? What if we were to
create a network of networks, which links regional research
institutions and universities as a means of strengthening
quality, cost-effectiveness and inter-disciplinary knowledge,
through broad information sharing between knowledge-producing
centers? What if we set out strategies to strengthen
mechanisms through which analytical work from African research
networks and universities impacts on public policy decisions
and activities of civil society? And what if we could
simultaneously identify strategic studies needed to address
urgent development issues?
At the Economic Commission for Africa, working with a number
of partner organizations, we are helping to network African
centers of expertise. This involves building a web of
professional networks and centers of excellence to strengthen
the impact and cost-effectiveness of knowledge-producing
research networks and universities.
In seeking to harness Africa's talent to design innovative
solutions to our development problems, we at the ECA are
mindful of the fact that no single institution can act in
isolation. Indeed, we consider partnerships to be critical to
achieving optimal impact in the region. It is in this spirit
of partnership that we reach out to the African Renaissance
Institute. We welcome the Institute's noble goals, and we
share its objectives. As such, we pledge to work closely with
the Institute in tapping the wealth of expertise that our
continent holds. We look forward to developing concrete
modalities to drive this nascent partnership forward.
Chairperson
ECA's partnership approach is enhanced by its dual role as the
regional arm of the United Nations in Africa, and at the same
time an important member of the African institutional
landscape, in concert with the Organization of African Unity
and the African Development Bank. This allows us to convene a
wide cross-section of Africans and their partners to share
perspectives on key development issues, and to forge common
African positions. We have used this convening power to good
effect in recent years. We have brought together African
policy makers and private sector actors across the world
around the issues of investment; we have rallied African
finance and planning ministers around the question of debt;
and we have provided the largest mainstream forum yet to
mobilize action on empowering Africa's women.
We are using this convening power as a key advocacy mechanism
to strengthen interaction between public policy
decision-makers and research networks and institutions,
creating feedback loops between research, teaching, policy
application and civic interests. This will enhance the
understanding of African issues and promote African content of
knowledge and demand-driven research of practical relevance.
Our advocacy is underpinned by rigorous policy analysis and
research into some of the key development issues. For
example, in our latest Economic Report on Africa, we have
developed a set of new indices to assess the policy outcomes
and economic performance of individual African countries. The
indices also rank countries on the basis on their progress in
meeting the long-term development objectives of poverty
reduction, and measure the consistency of short-run policy
actions with stated long-term goals.
Chairperson
This brings me quickly to the theme of my address today, "the
African Development Forum: A Dialogue for the Renaissance". I
want to share with you this new process and how it can
galvanize Africa's intellectual talent to promote an
African-driven development agenda, and achieve a consensus on
the priorities and strategies to meet specific goals. The ADF
will present governments, civil society and other key
stakeholders of Africa's development with the results of
current research and analysis on these important development
goals.
The ADF is not an isolated event. Rather, it is a process that
includes concrete mechanisms designed to ensure follow-up and
to monitor the status of implementation of agreed actions at
country level and regional level also. We consider networks of
African researchers as key in the preparation of the technical
and policy position papers around each year's theme.
The ADF process and the priorities identified in each year's
theme need the highest possible political support. We have
seen many efforts fail in the past because they did not have
the full backing of Africa's leadership, and we were very
mindful of this when we set about to design the ADF process.
We shall seek counsel and guidance from a forum of the Heads
of State and Government.
Chairperson
This year's ADF, the inaugural Forum that we hope will become
a seminal moment in the African development calendar, is being
convened in Addis Ababa from 24 to 28 October 1999. The theme,
"The Challenge to Africa of Globalisation and the Information
Age" has been chosen as a millennium issue, a renaissance
issue if you like, because of the importance of defining
African-owned and African-led strategies to engage with the
global information economy. Indeed, it is a theme that
President Mbeki has articulated as one of the pillars of the
renaissance. The ECA has long advocated the importance of such
strategies in the context of the African Information Society
Initiative (AISI), which we are implementing along with a wide
range of partners.
With its large rural population Africa represents the largest
untapped market for new communications services. It also
represents a major challenge to innovators who must identify
and adapt products that will help Africa leapfrog some of its
most fundamental development challenges.
When we speak of leapfrogging, we envisage information
technology solutions that will save lives by bringing medical
knowledge and diagnosis to areas that are cut off from access
to conventional health services; we are looking at distance
education applications that will create virtual classrooms,
thereby improving the access of young Africans to the
knowledge that they so badly need to become agents of
development; we foresee initiatives that will link our
entrepreneurs with local, regional and global markets; we see
prospects for improved governance, through enhanced access to
communication and African media content.
Examples of these sectoral applications are already available
in many African countries. This first Forum will showcase some
of these best practices and concrete examples. Profiles have
been prepared on the status of information technology in all
African countries, along with in-depth National Information
and Communication Infrastructure plans for some 20 countries
in Africa.
As a key feature of the Forum, a panel of leading African
policy researchers and analysts will examine the implications
for their work of the emergence of the new technologies. They
will also examine how applications can be tailored to enhance
their own research.
Your Excellencies
Distinguished Guests
South Africa is a leader in this field in the continent and
the leadership of this country has fully embraced information
technology as a driving force for development. As such, we
have very much to learn from you. I am pleased to say that in
preparation for the first ADF, we have been working very
closely with the government of South Africa. I wish to take
this occasion to extend my sincere gratitude to our South
African partners for being so committed to the success of ADF.
In particular, we are most grateful for the interest that
President Mbeki has shown in the ADF process, for his
commitment to its goals, and for his wise counsel.
In closing, Mr. President, I wish to recall the story of the
residents of the town of Dead Man's Creek in Mississippi. As
told by you, every evening at 9pm, after watching the many
images of wars, starvation, malnutrition, refugees, corruption
and other African horrors on their TV screens, the residents
of that town found it very difficult to reconcile such images
with the vision of an African renaissance. They therefore
concluded, amid much laughter, that African leaders like
yourself who speak of an African renaissance must either be
great comedians or, at the very least, must have a good sense
of humour.
Mr. President, I recently drove through Dead Man's Creek. The
bad news is that they are still laughing at us. But the good
news is that this laughter will stop one day soon. Why?
Because you have succeeded in turning us all into rebels for
the renaissance -- to use your phrase. With such leadership,
with such a shared vision, and with a wealth of natural and
human resources, Africa will claim the 21st century. Thank
you.
This material is being reposted for wider distribution by the
Africa Policy Information Center (APIC). APIC's primary
objective is to widen the policy debate in the United States
around African issues and the U.S. role in Africa, by
concentrating on providing accessible policy-relevant
information and analysis usable by a wide range of groups and
individuals.
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