Global Policy Forum

The South African ambassador to the United Nations, Dumisani Kumalo, painted a bleak picture of the UN's 10-year New Agenda for the Development of Africa (Nadaf) when he addressed the general assembly in New York on Monday. He said statistics showing resource flows to Africa highlighted the deteriorating situation. Between 1992 and 1998, there had been a decrease in domestic savings rates, and a continuing flight of capital from Africa which had reached an estimated total of US$ 350 billion.

This represents a drop of more than 50 percent in overseas development aid flows, and persistently low and decreasing direct foreign investment in Africa. Other negative factors were deterioration in terms of trade for the continent, the escalating debt burden and the decline of the per capita income from 749 US dollars in 1980 to 688 in 1998.

Challenges

"All these paint a very bleak picture of the problems facing our continent," Kumalo said. "These signs seem to suggest that once we come to the final review of the UN-Nadaf in 2002, we will be faced with an even greater challenge than we had at the beginning of the agenda (in 1992). "We risk the prospect of a tragic confirmation that Africa's economic and financial situation has worsened in the decade that UN-Nadaf has been in place."

But Kumalo also said there were reasons for optimism as the priorities of UN-Nadaf showed. Africans had started finding solutions for the continent's problems amid a growing understanding of the particular nature of their problems and challenges. The wide range of existing bilateral and multilateral initiatives was testimony to this. Africa was also working on proposals towards the establishment of a global partnership for the development of the continent, to be launched in the not too distant future.

African Renaissance

"Africans are in the process of defining the broad priorities for our continent. We choose to call this process the African Renaissance," said Kumalo. This meant firstly establishing democratic political systems and secondly ensuring these systems were based on African specifics so they addressed the competing interests of different social groups in each country. Thirdly, establishing institutions and procedures to enable the continent to deal collectively with questions of democracy, peace and stability.

The next challenge was to achieve sustainable development and to improve the standard of living of the majority of people. Africa's place in the global economy had to be changed by eradicating the debt burden and positioning the continent to be more than just a supplier of raw materials and an importer of manufactured goods. Ensuring the full emancipation of women in Africa and successfully confronting the scourge of infectious diseases such as HIV-Aids, tuberculosis and malaria also had to be achieved.

Africa-specific

The final review of the UN-Nadaf would have make a thorough evaluation of all initiatives, not only within the UN system, but also in other bilateral, multilateral and regional initiatives related to Africa. Consideration would have to be given to ways in which the Africa-specific elements of the major UN conferences could be brought together with the other initiatives for and by Africa. Kumalo said there could be no sustainable development without peace and security. "The immediate reminder for us is the senseless war raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo." This war continued to consume human and financial resources of nine other countries, he said. Sixteen months after the Lusaka peace accord for the DRC, the UN Security Council had not played its mandated role of restoring peace and security in the region, said Kumalo.

Regional Solutions

The UN-Nadaf review would also have to evaluate the contribution of regional solutions to the problems. The Southern African Development Community had reaped benefits from regional integration and co-operation on projects such as the Maputo and Lebombo corridor developments. But international linkage also had to be bolstered. "We need to strengthen the partnership between the countries of the north and the countries of the south... The problems we face cannot be addressed by Africans only. "With confidence, our leaders meeting at the Organisation of African Unity summit in Algeria in 1999 declared this the African century. We believe they must have known something which UN-Nadaf may prove next time."

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