HEADQUARTERS PRESS CONFERENCE ON UN NEW AGENDA FOR DEVELOPMENT OF AFRICA

The United Nations New Agenda for the Development of Africa in the 1990s (UN-NADAF) had achieved disappointing results, Kwesi Botchwey, head of an independent expert panel reviewing the decade-long initiative, said at a Headquarters press conference this morning.

Presenting the main findings of the final UN-NADAF review, Dr. Botchwey  said the process had not come close to meeting the expected results, including a proposed normative GDP (gross domestic product) growth of more than 6 per cent  per annum.  It had assumed that Africa would receive resource flows amounting to $30 billion in ODA (official development assistance) for the year 1992, after which such flows to the region would increase annually by about 4 per cent.

He said only about a 3 per cent average growth rate had been achieved for the decade, and ODA flows, far from increasing, had declined by as much as 43 per cent.  Also, Africa's reliance on primary commodities, instead of decreasing, had, in fact, intensified, and a proposed fund to promote diversification of the region's export base had not been established.  In addition, investment flows had remained concentrated in a small number of countries with oil- and mining-based economies despite widespread liberalization of investment laws.

Dr. Botchwey attributed the disappointing performance to an international trade environment that remained hostile, non-materialization of resource flows and unmet commitments in ODA and foreign direct investment (FDI).  Internal causes included significant failings in economic and political governance, even though many countries had made progress towards democratization.

Regarding other important targets of UN-NADAF, he said there had been hardly any progress in the area of food security.  Any advances had resulted mainly from changed policies by African governments, many of them brought about by pressure from the Bretton Woods institutions to institute structural adjustment programmes.  While human development had been given greater prominence in policy-making, the ecological and physical dimensions remained very poor, he added.

Dr. Botchwey said that among the key lessons identified by the review was the need to avoid the wholesale adoption of liberalization as the cutting edge of development policy, without any attempt to address specific local conditions.  In addition, immediate compliance with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules concerning international property rights and subsidies for agricultural industries made little sense, especially when the wealthy countries spent enormous amounts to support much richer farmers in their domestic markets.

Another major lesson was the need for a mechanism for sustained international advocacy of African development issues, he said, which had waned with the end of the cold war.  There was also a need to improve the efficiency and relevance of the United Nations system’s response to those issues.

Dr. Botchwey proposed that the Organization should support an African-driven framework, such as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), as an

appropriate successor to UN-NADAF rather than establishing another United Nations initiative for Africa.

The review panel was appointed by Secretary-General Kofi Annan last August in response to a request by the General Assembly, which adopted UN-NADAF in December 1991.  The initiative was a successor to the five-year Programme of Action for African Economic Recovery and Development launched in 1996, the first-ever United Nations programme for a specific region.

Dr. Botchwey, asked who was responsible for the failure to achieve UN-NADAF's goals, replied that both internal and external causes were related.  In many countries, the impact of external causes had been severely exacerbated by internal failings, he added.

Another journalist asked how any new approach would be more effective, given the factors that had limited African development in the 1990s.

He said the important thing was to provide space for African countries themselves to focus on their own specific development conditions.

Responding to a question on Africa's brain drain, he said most skilled people left Africa for political or economic reasons.  As soon as those conditions began to change, they would either stream back or engage their countries in some other way.

Asked what impact the transformation of the Organization of African Unity into the African Union would have, Dr. Botchwey, a former Finance Minister of Ghana, replied that one long-term effect would be economic integration and the adoption of a single currency.

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