Press BRIEFING BY SECRETARY-GENERAL’S SPECIAL ADVISER ON AFRICA

 

(Issued on 19 October 2004.)

Briefing correspondents today at Headquarters on progress towards peace and development in Africa, Under-Secretary-General and Secretary-General’s Adviser on Africa, Ibrahim Gambari, highlighted gains in the area of peace and security, but shortfalls in terms of meeting the continent’s development goals.

Mr. Gambari was joined at the podium by:  Bamanga Tukur, Chairman, New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), Business Group; and Wiseman Nkuhlu, Economic Advisor to President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, and Chairperson, NEPAD’s Steering Committee. 

At the outset, the Under-Secretary-General discussed two reports of the Secretary-General, which formed the basis of the General Assembly’s debate this week on African issues, namely:  Causes of conflict and promotion of durable peace and sustainable development in Africa (document A/52/871-S/1998/318); and the Second consolidated report on progress in implementation and international support of the NEPAD (document A/59/206). 

On the first report, he said that the headlines on Africa in the world media continued to be dominated by the tragic events in Darfur, Sudan; Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire.  Those events had not allowed room for much positive reporting, including about the efforts of African countries themselves, with international support.  Instead, those negative images were obscuring the positive developments being implemented with respect to the NEPAD. 

Progress was indeed being registered with regard to the Secretary-General’s first report, he continued.  For instance, at the time of the first report in 1998, an estimated 14 to 17 States had been engaged in armed conflict, and 11 had been experiencing deep political turmoil, whereas today, only a few States were involved in armed conflict, including Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and Liberia.  Burundi could be added to that list.  For the most part, even in those conflicts, there were positive developments in the peace processes. 

It was true, he added, that Somalia had been without a central government for almost a decade, but there had been a recent election of an interim president by an interim parliament.  In Burundi, the fact that the Security Council had felt confident enough to dispatch peacekeepers was indicative of the increasing recognition that there was a peace to be kept.  The Council had also authorized five new peace operations in the past year, in Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Burundi, Sudan, and Sierra Leone.  In the last, a drawdown of troops was under way, in recognition that things were going fairly well. 

In his second review on Africa’s progress, the Secretary-General recognized that the international community, regional organizations and African countries, themselves, had made serious efforts to deal with the scourge of conflict in all its aspects, he said.  The key task had been to ensure that more conflicts did not erupt.  Again, he underscored that the Security Council’s decision last year to approve five new peace operations in Africa was a recognition that there was more peace, however fragile, to be kept on the continent.

He highlighted two significant peace and security gains, namely the establishment of the African Peace and Security Council, and the movement towards the creation of a standby force.  The international community, particularly the “G-8” (group of industrialized countries) and the European Union, had been very supportive of Africa’s capacity-building.  The Union had given some 250 to 300 million euros in support of those efforts, and the G-8 had recently agreed to train some 70,000 peacekeepers to help strengthen Africa’s capacity.  Commitment to improving governance had been demonstrated by the growing number of countries, now at 23, subscribing to the voluntary peer review. 

He said that much had happened to advance NEPAD, whose accomplishments had been due mainly to the efforts of the African countries, themselves.  Within the African Union, there had also been progress in the development of sectoral policy frameworks, among other areas.  Clearly, the Africans were putting resources behind their priorities.  A number of other meetings had taken place recently, including in Washington, D.C. last month, which had been underpinned by the desire to move the development partners from their general declaration of support of Africa into the promise of concrete resources. 

Later this week, a meeting would take place of the Secretary-General’s high-level advisory panel on support for NEPAD, he noted.  Nonetheless, much remained to be done by the international community in support of NEPAD.  For example, there had to be an alignment of the various funds, programmes and priorities of the United Nations system itself and of those doing business with Africa, with NEPAD’s priorities and budget cycles.  Also, the United Nations’ financial commitment to NEPAD should be increased. 

Concerning official development assistance (ODA), he said that, although a there had been a slight increase in ODA for Africa compared with the last few years, several challenges remained.  The proportion of ODA for agriculture had been declining globally and for Africa.  More importantly, there had to be greater policy coherence, in terms of the developed partners’ policies towards Africa.  By that he had meant that those partners should not give ODA and then take it away, in terms of debt repayment and other things. 

(Mr. Gambari also highlighted several side events, which would be announced in The Journal.)

Asked why, if the panel in support of NEPAD had been established on 20 July, it had taken two months to convene this week’s meeting, he said that it had been thought best to have the first meeting in the margins of the General Assembly.

Responding to a question about African farmers, he said they were being hurt by the absence of real opportunity to compete fairly in the market.  Subsidies for agricultural products in Europe and North America were hurting African farmers.  In cotton alone, three countries in Africa -- Burkina Faso, Benin and Mali -- were losing some $11 billion as a result of subsidies given to cotton farmers in the United States.  The developed partners should have a comprehensive and coherent policy of support for Africa’s development, which linked the trade issue and external debt to ODA, for example, in a coherent manner that enabled Africa to benefit from its external partners.  He added that the rate of return of investment in Africa was among the highest in the world. 

Mr. Tukur, President of NEPAD’s Business Group, said that people tended to look at Africa as a whole, that one conflict in one part of Africa affected the continent.  People also thought of instability, conflict and disease as afflicting the whole continent, which was not true in its totality.  That Africa was seen as Africa, and not as individual countries, was the source of problems.  He hoped people would differentiate Africa and consider it, not as a single entity, but as comprised of more than 50 countries.  

The Chairman of NEPAD’s Steering Committee, Wiseman Nkuhlu, said it was true that African countries would not meet the Millennium Development Goals without radically scaled-up production.  NEPAD was actually resulting in increased food production and agricultural and rural development.  The programme of the past two years had been very comprehensive, on which promises of African investment of some 10 per cent of public budgets over the next five years had been based.  The call now was for the international community to actually support those investments in food production, agriculture and development, especially since African leaders saw that as central to meeting the Goals, especially on poverty.

He said that market access was a big issue.  That fight must continue, but Africa’s capacity to supply must also be increased.  The demand for food in Africa far exceeded what Africans produced, so Africans were importing a lot from the rest of the world.  That challenge should be addressed. 

Africa had told the world that it was not satisfied with the status quo, “business as usual”, in terms of governance, transparency and accountability, Mr. Gambari said in reply to another question.  The Algiers Declaration of 1999 had said that no member would be admitted to the Organization of African Unity (OAU), now African Union (AU), which had changed its government other than by constitutional means.  That was recognition that Africa had to change the way it did “political business”, even internally.  There had also been the establishment of the African parliament, which had sought to involve civil society and women’s groups in governance.  Then, the establishment of an African peer review mechanism, to which 23 nations had signed on, had put in place a procedure for examining behaviour, such as in the areas of governance, politics, and economies. 

Asked if there was basically a lot of talk internationally, but little action on the crisis in Sudan, he said that the African Union should decide that the most forward-looking thing to do was to strengthen the peace and security council and establish the standby force.  Africans were saying they wanted to do that themselves, but their constraints were many.  When Nigeria, as a leader of the Economic Community of West African States’ Monitoring Observer Group (ECOMOG), went into Liberia and Sierra Leone, it cost the country $1 million per day.  Now, to send thousands of troops to Darfur would be exorbitant.  Who would pay?  The Council’s blessing of the African peacekeepers to go to Sudan would be welcome, but to what extent would that initiative be backed by financial and logistical support? he asked. 

Africa had decided to try to handle the crisis in Uganda on its own, he replied to a further question.  If it needed support, it would come back to the United Nations.  The first step was to see if that conflict was ripe for resolution.  If external resources were needed, Africa would ask for that. 

Asked if the NEPAD leaders were satisfied with the level of global contributions, he said that, no, he had not thought they were satisfied, nor should they be, given the magnitude of the challenges.  Africa was the least likely to meet the first development goals of halving those living in extreme poverty by 2015.  So, even with Africa’s best intentions, that goal would not be met unless something radical was done, such as increasing ODA and addressing support for trade and investment.  Africa’s share of world trade was actually declining from 4 per cent to less than 2 per cent.  It also needed a massive infusion of private investment, in light of the fact that it had the least share of direct foreign investment than any other region. 

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