BLAIR AFRICA COMMISSION ‘A CHANCE TO MOVE FROM RHETORIC TO ACTION’

BLAIR AFRICA COMMISSION ‘A CHANCE TO MOVE FROM RHETORIC TO ACTION’

(Reissued as received.)

ADDIS ABABA, 4 March (ECA) -- The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa’s (ECA) Executive Secretary, K.Y. Amoako, has said he believes the new Commission for Africa launched by British Prime Minister Tony Blair offers an opportunity to move from rhetoric to action.

“The international community and Africa have agreed on the central importance of a partnership to achieve NEPAD’s goals but we must now focus on implementation and action”, he said.  “We must agree on what we can really deliver for Africa’s people.”

Mr. Amoako has accepted an invitation to serve on the Commission which Mr. Blair hopes will identify the global trends influencing Africa’s development and propose effective policies to tackle the continent’s problems.

Mr. Blair has pledged that Africa will be a priority during the United Kingdom’s presidencies of the Group of Eight (G-8) and the European Union in 2005.  Launching the Commission late last week, he told a press conference that Africa was the only continent to have grown poorer in the past 25 years, that its share of world trade had halved in a generation, and that it received less than 1 per cent of direct foreign investment.

He said 44 million children could not go to school, and that millions were dying due to hunger, disease or conflict.  Although it would be difficult to reach the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, he believed it was essential to try.

Around a dozen commissioners, including United Kingdom Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown and International Development Secretary Hilary Benn, will make recommendations on economic issues, education, conflict resolution, health, the environment, HIV/AIDS, governance and culture.

The Commissioners are politicians and opinion-formers drawn from developed countries and from Africa, including Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, South Africa’s Finance Minister, Trevor Manuel, and development activist and musician Bob Geldof.  Others include United States Senator Nancy Kasabel-Baker and Michel Camdessus who will represent France.

Mr. Blair said the Commission would help to bring some key issues to “a decision point for the G-8 and then the wider world”.

For more information, please contact Akwe Amosu, e-mail: aamosu@uneca.org.  Issued by the ECA Communication Team, Economic Commission for Africa, P.O. Box 3001 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, tel.: +251-1-51 58 26, fax: +251-1-51 03 65, e-mail: ecainfo@uneca.org.

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