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Allow me also to welcome you to the National Treasury.
Many of you would probably know that the Commission for Africa
was established by Prime Minister Tony Blair earlier this year as a
prelude to the UK being in the rather unusual position of chairing
both the G8 and holding the Presidency of the European Union in
2005.
Moreover, some of you may also know that I serve on the
Commission as one of three Finance Ministers responsible for
issues in economic development.
But I am sure that many of you may also still be wondering what
exactly the Commission for Africa is all about, which is why we
meet here today. The purpose of this seminar is to share
information about the objectives of the Commission as well as to
provide you with an opportunity to give your perspective and ideas
on what the Commission should do. I am therefore confident that
we will leave this seminar a lot wiser than we arrived.
Let me start by saying something about my own expectations of
the Commission for Africa.
For the past four years, since the G8 meeting in Genoa, a number
of African Heads of States have been invited as special guests to
participate at the G8 Summits. This was done in recognition of the
pertinent development problems facing the Africa continent but
also in light of the unprecedented opportunity to make progress on
common goals of eradicating extreme poverty and achieving
sustainable development, following the UN Millennium Declaration,
the Monterrey Consensus on Financing for Development, the
launch of the Doha Development Round of multilateral trade
negotiations, and the Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable
Development.
This culminated in 2002, at the G8 Summit in Kananaskis,
Canada, in the G8 endorsement of the Africa Action Plan, which
commits the G8 to provide adequate resources so that no African
country genuinely committed to poverty reduction and good
governance would be restrained from achieving the Millennium
Development Goals. More concretely, they committed themselves
to increase ODA flows by a total of US$ 12 billion per year, of
which half or more would be allocated to African countries.
In these actions, the G8 has clearly shown their willingness to
partner with African countries, recognising Africa's desire to further
its own development. We have made great strides in NEPAD and
the African Union, based on a progressive Constitutive Act and
underpinned by institutions to ensure effectiveness and
accountability, such as the Pan-African Parliament and the African
Peer Review Mechanism.
This moment of interest, support and conscience should not be
lost. The Commission for Africa is an important initiative but it also
faces distinct challenges.
NEPAD has shifted the centre of decision-making about African
matters from North to South. Our responsibility is to strengthen the
locus of African decision-making. At the national level, the
importance for equitable growth, macroeconomic stability and
microeconomic policies that facilitate competitiveness and
sustainable wealth creation cannot be understated. Capable state
institutions are required for African states to balance the
distribution of economic burdens and opportunities.
Through the African Peer Review Mechanism, African countries
have embarked on an ambitious process to improve our
institutional and policy environment, accelerate poverty reduction
and install good governance, accountability and best practice on
the Continent. The Commission for Africa shall recognise these
efforts as a major step along the path to improved governance,
and giving it the backing as the standard-setting institution for
African countries.
Moreover, the Commission for Africa shall put pressure on the G8
to meet their commitments in the Africa Action Plan with respect to
more and better financing of development, opening markets to
products from developing countries, debt relief and promotion of
private sector investments in productive assets in Africa. The
argument in favour of trade distorting measures has long expired.
Moreover, the beggar-thy-neighbor economic policies of the
world’s largest economies is elevating uncertainty in the world,
with negative spill-over effects on investment and growth
opportunities of developing countries.
The year 2005 presents us with a collective challenge to take
stock, reflect and substantially galvanize efforts towards the
Millennium Development Goals. It constitutes the first deadline for
meeting some of the MDGs and it is the targeted deadline for the
publication of a major UN study done by the UN Millennium Project
on the financing of the MDGs. Further discussion is necessary on
how we should proceed once developing countries achieve their
MDGs. Emphasis should be placed on stimulating the supply side
of the economy to achieve sustainable growth.
Despite an increasingly positive economic outlook in Africa,
substantially faster growth will be needed to reduce poverty and to
meet the Millennium Development Goals in Africa. Over the past
twenty-five years, our continent has grown poorer - not richer, and
only 4 countries are on track to meet the MDGs in 2015. On
present trends, Africa as a whole will only achieve the universal
education targets in 2029, halving poverty will require another 100
years, and meeting the child mortality rates will only happen in
2169.
So the Commission for Africa is in my view a welcome addition to
the series of meetings and initiatives that center on the challenge
of increasing the pace of development and poverty reduction in
Africa.
The Commission represents a critical opportunity to work with a
key development partner, and member of the G8, to make known
Africa’s concerns about its own development tasks and to talk
about the sort of international economic environment that would be
conducive to achieving those tasks.
The Commission has so far identified a range of issues that need
more discussion and definition, including the role of multilateral
and bilateral trade policies and impediments to domestic and
international resource mobilization. Investment policies, the
constraints facing women in our economies, infrastructure, and
many others clearly need to be addressed by a comprehensive
work discussing Africa’s challenges.
Nick Stern is here today from the Commission and UK Treasury in
large part to begin a process of discussion with us on these issues.
And I trust that in the time we have for discussion you will raise the
concerns you have about the concrete development challenges we
face, your perspectives on what is needed to be done to overcome
them, and any views you would like to share regarding how the
Commission can best achieve its objectives.
Thank you
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