UN Radio

UN and Africa
Programme Number: 170
Week of: Sunday, 16 September 2007
Recording Date: Thursday, 20 September 2007
Topical Issue(s):

The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launches the MDG Africa Steering Group to boost Africa's efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals set by world leaders in 2000. He says he is concerned that Sub-Saharan Africa is still lagging behind in meeting the goals to improve people's lives.

The Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union, Hamadoun Toure, says information and communication technologies are critical for meeting the Millennium Development Goals in Africa. Toure says that Africa can meet these goals in the ICT if its leaders do the right things.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour says that violations of human rights happen daily in the troubled Darfur region of Sudan. She says that a peace conference to resolve the crisis and the deployment of a hybrid UN/AU peacekeeping force offer source of hope for improving the human rights situation in this region.

Producer/presenter: Derrick Mbatha
Editor: Ransford Cline-Thomas
Production Assistant: Florence Poblete-Enriquez
Studio Engineer: Zach Prewitt
Duration: 15'00"

PRESENTER: This is United Nations Radio in New York.

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PRESENTER: Hello and welcome to UN and Africa. I'm Derrick Mbatha.

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PRESENTER: In today's programme, the UN Secretary-General launches a body to help Sub-Saharan Africa get on track to meet the millennium development goals.

CLIP 1: Ban Ki-moon
"That is the only region in the world where not even a single country is on track."

PRESENTER: You will hear more on that in a moment. Also in this edition, the head of the International Telecommunication Union says information and communication technologies or ICTs are crucial for Africa's development.

CLIP 2: Hamadoun Toure
"Our objective here is to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Unless we meet them in the ICT field, we are not going to meet them in other fields."

PRESENTER: And later in the programme, the top United Nations human rights official says that violations of human rights are a daily occurrence in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Louise Arbour
"Darfur continues to be a matter of serious preoccupation. The human rights violations continue to be of the same nature and largely on the same scale."

PRESENTER: So, stay tuned to UN and Africa.

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UN Secretary-General Launches a Group to Boost MDG's in Africa

PRESENTER: In order to boost Africa's efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals to improve people's lives by 2015, the United Nations Secretary-General has created a new body. Known as the Millennium Development goals Africa Steering Group, it brings together senior officials from the African Union, the African Development Bank, the Islamic Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. UN Radio's Ransford Cline-Thomas has more.

NARRATOR:
The mission of the MDG Africa Steering Group, as the new body is known, is to help African countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, to mobilize the necessary resources to meet the goals set by world leaders in 2000. These goals include cutting by half the number of people living in extreme poverty, ensuring that children get primary education, cutting by two thirds the number of children who die before they reach the age of five years, reduce the number of women who die during child birth and stop the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases. The United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, is concerned that Sub Saharan Africa is still lagging behind in meeting these Millennium Development Goals.

CUT 1: Ban Ki-moon
That is the only region in the world where not even a single country is on track. We must help those countries so that they can join and get on track. We need to have a balanced development by the time we reach 2015.

NARRATOR: The President of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, says that the Bank recognizes that Africa is a continent of great diversity and that whatever plans are put in place must be owned by the countries themselves. He also notes that some of the African countries have been successful in their economic growth.

CUT 2: Robert Zoellick
There is about a third of the population, about seventeen countries that have actually averaged about five and a half per cent growth over the past ten years. For those countries, the key is to try to build the resources from multilateral institutions as well as member government to help them succeed. There is about another third of the population, a little less, in about eight countries that have benefited enormously from oil revenues. For them, it's a question of how they deploy those revenues and so the focus will be on good governance practices, transparency and capacity building. Then there is about another third that has suffered because of the challenges of post-conflict environment or fragile states. They will need a special type of support.

NARRATOR: And for his part, the African Union Commissioner for Economic Affairs, Maxwell Mkwezalamba, says the Secretary-General's initiative to establish the MDG Steering Group will help the continent in its efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. And those efforts, he points out, should focus on agriculture, education, health, infrastructure and the collection of data. According to Mr. Mkwezalamba, there must be international support to help Africa meet the goals.

CUT 3: Maxwell Mkwezalamba
Of course, international support has not been forthcoming as promised, and this has been one of our major concerns. You look at the commitments made since Monterrey in 2002, the Gleneagles in 2005; we find that there is not much that has come to Africa. This indeed is something that needs to be addressed if Africa is to attain the MDGs by the target date of 2015.

NARRATOR: Meanwhile, a Working Group, chaired by the Deputy Secretary-General, Asha-Rose Migiro is meeting at headquarters this week to continue the work of the MDG Steering Group. Ms. Asha-Rose Migiro says this group will be made up of officials at the working levels from the institutions represented in the Africa Steering Group, namely the African Union, the African Development Bank, the Islamic Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

CUT 4: Asha-Rose Migiro
The intention there is to look at the actual actions that will have to be taken in order to give further push to the MDGs. This will identify the areas of resource mobilization, the sectors that need to be focused on and so son. But one of the intentions of having this meeting so inclusive is to ensure that each one of us plays a role, with the United Nations taking the lead, at the initiative of the Secretary-General.

NARRATOR: United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro talking there about the Secretary-General's MDG Africa Steering Group launched last Friday to help Africa meet the Millennium Development Goals. Reporting for UN Radio, I am Ransford Cline-Thomas.
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PRESENTER: As you've just heard in our previous segment, Africa is facing serious challenges in meeting the Millennium Development Goals. But in the area of information and communication technologies, the continent is making impressive progress. Right now, African leaders are preparing to meet in Kigali, Rwanda next month to share ideas on how to improve and further develop information and communication technologies on the continent, particularly the Internet and broadband connectivity so that information can be sent faster across the continent. The man leading United Nations efforts in this field is Dr. Hamadoun Toure, the Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union. I caught up with him after he spoke with reporters about the Connect Africa Initiative.

TOURE: Well we have launched the "Connect the World" series in May 2007 and we want to start on a regional basis with Africa. We are launching on 29 and 30 October this year the Summit in Kigali, bringing together the political leaders and the industry leaders to work together to see how concretely we can implement infrastructure, massive infrastructure projects on the African continent. .

MBATHA: And how would you characterize the situation of information and communication technologies on the African continent? Does it look good?

TOURE: Well first of all let me tell you, our objective here is to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Unless we meet them in the ICT field, we are not going to meet them in the other fields. The situation in Africa is such a way that it's the only continent that has been leading in terms of growth over the past three years, 50 to 400 growth annually in some countries. So, for the first time we have Africa leading in economic indicators. That's good news. All the growth I am mentioning is the growth in the mobile sector generally. How can we implement that in the Internet and broadband areas as well in order to have real growth? Therefore we do have a very good sound environment in Africa today. How do we attract more investors, more private sector to do business, meaningful business? We are not talking about charity. No one will come out of poverty through charity. We want meaningful businesses that will create wealth, will create jobs.

MBATHA: When one talks about information and communication technologies usually one thinks about just communicating with each other or passing on information, cell phones. How is this linked with economic development?

TOURE: Well you know that, first of all communicating is a basic human right. The moment you are born you are communicating with people. Now we have seen that communication is a tool also for all sectors of the economy, from a saleswoman of vegetables in a local market to an industry leader. All of them can use communication as a tool for development. In the past, what was the alternative to communication? For a woman selling vegetables in a market, when her supplies ran out, she would close her little shop and travel by car or for two hours by bus and come back. Now you find her with her mobile phone she will just make a phone call when her supply is low and she will continue to sell during that time. She is making more money and she is more productive. And this can be applied to any other sector of economy.

MBATHA: I understand that on the African continent mobile phones are widespread and more popular. Tell me about that.

TOURE: Well, the Chairman of Intel, Craig Barret, was just telling us that he was last week in Tanzania and on Mount Kilimanjaro and his cell phone was working there. And this is something you don't have in some European or some U.S. rural areas as well. Therefore, it's very important to know that mobile phones have been very much widespread on the African continent. We need to increase the penetration. It is almost sixty per cent today, in terms of geographic coverage, but it is not reflected in the number of the population that is also accessing. So there is large room for growth as well. But beyond the mobile phone you need to be sure that you are moving to Internet and broadband as well access.

MBATHA: From what you are saying it seems that Africa is doing well in this area of information and communication technologies. Correct me if I am wrong.

TOURE: You are very right and I am very optimistic. We can meet the Millennium Development Goals in the ICT by 2012 if we do the right thing, if we set up the right regulatory environment, if we attract investment, the business leaders, if we attract private sector, if we allow them to make profit and to re-invest those profits. Therefore it's up to us be sure that we create the real level playing field for objective competition and that way convert into real growth for the continent.

PRESENTER: That was Dr. Hamadoun Toure, the Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union.

STING UN AFRICA THEME MUSIC

UN Human Rights Chief Says Violations Continue in Darfur

PRESENTER: The United Nations has made the resolving of the Darfur crisis one of its top priorities. The Security Council has already approved the deployment of a joint United Nations and African Union peacekeeping force. Peace talks aimed at ending the conflict are expected to begin next month in Libya. But despite these positive developments, there is concern that the government of Sudan is yet to show any commitment to ending atrocities in the Darfur region. From Geneva Patrick Maigua reports.

NARRATOR: The conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan has been raging since 2003. An estimated 200,000 people have been killed and 2.2 million forced to leave their homes because of fighting among rebel groups, government forces and allied militia known as the Janjaweed. The conflict has resulted in gross human rights violations, which have been documented to include, murder, rape, forced displacement and attacks against the civilian population. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour says the violations were a daily occurrence despite international condemnation.

CUT 1: Louise Arbour
Darfur continues to be a matter of serious preoccupation. In fact, the periodic reports, human rights reports that come out of the mission that have been produced regularly on that front don't give a lot of cause for great optimism that things are turning around on their own momentum. The human rights violations continue to be of the same nature and largely on the same scale.

The High Commissioner says there was little indication that the Sudanese government was responding to international pressure to have the abuses in Darfur stopped and their perpetrators brought to justice.

CUT 2: Louise Arbour
From what we can see on the ground, very little progress on national efforts to combat the culture of impunity. That is very very little progress on domestic prosecutions. Within a human rights framework, very little indication of change of attitude for the better on the part of the government of Sudan to respond to the warrants issued by the International Criminal Court.

NARRATOR: Despite the gloom that is the human rights situation in the Darfur region, there is a glimmer of hope as the United Nations prepares to deploy peacekeeping forces. An estimated 20,000 military personnel and 6,000 police offices are to be sent to Darfur to end the fighting. The human rights chief sees the deployment as major step towards safeguarding the human rights of the people in the Darfur region.

CUT 3: Louis Arbour
The slightly more energized peace process that will lead to a peace conference that could actually, and one hopes would bring the remaining rebel groups into the fold of the peace agreement and the deployment of the hybrid force, I think these two initiatives certainly give cause for some optimism that the human rights situation could improve, certainly with the deployment of a larger hybrid force to deploy some elements of protection into the region.

NARRATOR: The peacekeeping mission in Darfur, which will be a joint operation between the African Union and the United Nations, will be the largest peace keeping mission in the history of the United Nations. For UN Radio this is Patrick Maigua in Geneva

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PRESENTER: And that's all for this edition of UN and Africa. Our Production Assistant was Florence Poblete-Enriquez and our sound engineer was Zach Prewitt. I am Derrick Mbatha saying bye bye.

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