All over Africa, you could feel the excitement as Kofi Annan was sworn in last December as the new Secretary-General of the United Nations. His election was a source of great joy for millions of Africans who feted the day when a sub-Saharan African would now be occupying the coveted seat.
Perhaps the mood was best captured by 53-year-old Ghanaian civics teacher Acquah Mensah, who said, "Now, I can accept that when the UN Charter says ‘We the people,' it actually means all the peoples of the world."
The Secretary-General himself has always taken pride in his African roots. But he is also quick to point out that as Secretary-General, his calling is to serve all of humanity and he has set his priorities accordingly. Among the most important is to reform the UN to ensure its continued relevance. Already, he has announced a number of cost-cutting measures, including a planned 1998-1999 budget that will be $123 mn less than the current one, reduction of the staffing level by 1,000 posts and reduction of the organization's administrative costs by a third by the year 2001. He has also streamlined a number of departments, integrating the three departments in the economic and social area, creating a Department of General Assembly Affairs and Conference Services. The Department of Public Information is also to become the Office of Communications and Media Services.
The Secretary-General would like to move much more quickly. As he pointed out to a journalist who noted that God had created the earth in less than a week, God did not have to answer to 185 member states, each with its own ideas about how the reforms should proceed. While reform is topmost on Mr. Annan's agenda, he has also made it clear that Africa will remain a focus of activities. "As I embark on my term of office, I want to strongly reaffirm my intention to ensure that Africa's needs and well-being remain at the top of the international development agenda," he said at the 13th Annual Awards Dinner of the African-American Institute, held in New York in February.
As a practical move, he has appealed to the world's leading business people and industrialists to invest in Africa, noting that Africa's prospects for economic recovery are now greater than ever. He points out that democracy is spreading across the continent and governments are more receptive to the private sector – both domestic and foreign. "There is every hope that Africa, after the failures of the 20th century, will come into its own in the 21st," he said.
At a recent meeting with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, UNDP's Assistant Administrator and Director of the Regional Bureau for Africa, Mr. Annan again underscored his special interest in accelerating progress in Africa and fostering peace on the continent. In speech after speech, he has pledged continued efforts by the UN to help end the conflicts in Africa. His envoy, Ambassador Mohamed Sahnoun, is active in trying to negotiate an end to the crisis in Zaire and the Great Lakes region. At the same time, UN peace efforts are contin-uing in Angola, Liberia and other flashpoints, virtually all of which Mr. Annan had to oversee in his last post as Under-Secretary-General for Peace-Keeping Operations.
The Secretary-General is now some four months into his tenure, but in that time, he has come face to face with both the good and the bad sides of holding such a high office. He now speaks of the "excruciating demand on his time." But he takes comfort in some of the "pleasant surprises" he has seen since taking up the job, particularly the "considerable will and enthusiasm on the part of lots of Member States to cooperate with me and the UN to ensure that we adapt the organization and prepare ourselves for the future."
On the personal level, Mr. Annan says he and his wife have had difficulty adjusting to the lack of freedom and lack of spontaneity. They particularly miss the loss of the "ability of just saying ‘I feel like going for a walk, or I want to drop in on a friend' and doing just that."
But Mr. Annan, born in Kumasi, Ghana, in 1938, is more than ready for the long haul. The son of the late H.R. Annan, chief of the Fanti community in Kumasi, he grew up in the courts of the powerful king of the Ashantis where his father served. As one Ghanaian journalist observed, "in Ghana, nobody survives as a chief without skills in management and diplomacy." Indeed, the elder Annan appears to have taught his son well.
Moreover, Mr. Annan's career path from his early days seems to have positioned him for his current position. Over his 30-odd years in the UN system, he had stints in Geneva with the World Health Organization and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, in Addis Ababa with the Economic Commission for Africa, and at UN Headquarters in New York where his skills took him to his peace-keeping post.
For those who wonder whether Mr. Annan is the best person to deal with the daunting task of reform and other challenges that lie ahead, they can rest assured that the UN is in the best of hands, as a story related by his mother aptly shows. Talking to reporters several months ago, the Secretary-General's 88-year-old mother, Victoria, said that the young Kofi was a mischievous child who sometimes got into trouble. But then he always managed to get out. That ability to get out of difficult situations may be what the UN needs most at this time.