The second Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD II) will be held in the Japanese capital in late 1998, preceded by a preparatory meeting from 10-11 November 1997. The conferences are co-sponsored by the Japanese government, the UN and the Global Coalition for Africa.
TICAD I, held in 1993, was organized against a backdrop of declining international interest and a perceived marginalization of Africa, said Mr. Seigi Hinata, Deputy Director-General of the Middle Eastern and African Affairs Bureau in Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The conference adopted the Tokyo Declaration identifying broad areas of effort needed to accelerate African development.
These areas included political and economic reforms, strengthening the private sector, regional cooperation and integration, emergency relief, learning from the Asian experience and international cooperation. Building on some of these themes, TICAD II will aim to produce an action-oriented agenda for African development towards the 21st century. Like its predecessor, TICAD II will not be an aid-pledging conference, Mr. Hinata said. The preparatory meeting later this year will review progress made since TICAD I, select the main themes for the agenda for action and discuss the framework and organization of TICAD II. African and Asian countries will participate in both meetings, alongside non-governmental, international and regional organizations.
Rains end Kenya drought; floods in Malawi, Mozambique
Recent rains brought an end to Kenya's second major drought crisis in five years which, earlier this year, left as many as 2 million people in need of famine relief. At the same time, heavy rains in Malawi and Mozambique have resulted in more than 1.2 million people needing emergency assistance.
According to the UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA), the severe drought in northern and eastern Kenya followed poor rains in 1995 as well as below average precipitation during the March-June 1996 rainy season. The Kenyan government declared a drought emergency in late January and has issued an appeal for international assistance.
In addition, an outbreak of rinderpest, a highly contagious and lethal disease that affects cattle and wild animals such as buffaloes and giraffes, has spread dramatically in Kenya and has crossed the border into Tanzania. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) called the outbreak the worst in 15 years and said the drought has aggravated the situation as pastoralists move their animals off traditional rangelands in search of grazing.
FAO termed the spread of rinderpest into Tanzania "a matter of great socio-economic and ecological concern, threatening the wildlife reserves of Ngorongoro and Serengeti as well as the livestock in southern Tanzania and beyond."
In Malawi, DHA said unusually heavy rains in January and February caused floods in the lower Shire Valley, affecting about 900,000 people in Malawi and another 300,000 across the border in Mozambique. The governments of both countries have issued emergency appeals to bring assistance to the affected populations.
UNCTAD trust fund to boost trading capacity of LDCs
The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has established a trust fund to help the world's 48 least developed countries (LDCs) – 34 of which are in Africa – integrate into the global economy. UNCTAD has set an initial $5 mn target for the LDC trust fund, which will be used to help strengthen export supply capacities of LDCs by supporting trade policy reforms, trade diversification, and financial and fiscal sector reforms. India and the Republic of Korea have pledged $100,000 each for the fund, while the Republic of Korea has also agreed to earmark one-third of its $3 mn contribution for UNCTAD's technical cooperation activities.
Commenting on the initial pledges, UNCTAD Secretary-General Rubens Ricupero said "it is heartening that even in times of domestic budget stringency, the international community translates into action its concern, expressed at various UN conferences, regarding the risk of the weaker countries becoming increasingly marginalized in a globalizing economy."
According to UNCTAD, an innovative aspect of the trust fund is that it is to be funded not only by traditional donors, but also by developing countries, and potentially by least developed countries themselves. UNCTAD also will seek financing for the fund from non-governmental organizations, foundations and private companies.
Donors commit $485 mn in pledges for IFAD
After several years of delays, donors agreed in February to commit $485 mn for a new three-year financial replenishment for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the UN's main agency for aiding poor farmers. In the last replenishment in 1989, for $567 mn, members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) contributed about 40 per cent of the funds, while the industrialized countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) gave 60 per cent.
Agreement on a new replenishment, originally to have been completed in 1992, was delayed by demands by the OECD for a greater decision-making role, in return for higher OECD pledges to offset declining OPEC contributions. In the new agreement, OECD countries will give $376 mn, OPEC will contribute $45-50 mn and non-oil developing countries have pledged $60 mn. While previously each group of countries held one-third of the votes on IFAD's Governing Council, the OECD share is to be increased, although OPEC and the other developing countries will still hold a majority.
Despite the delays in the replenishment, IFAD has committed $1.78 bn to 150 projects since 1992, drawing on its investment income and loan interest and repayment.
WHO appeals for $6.3 mn to combat meningitis
With a record number of meningitis cases and deaths recorded in Africa last year, a $6.3 mn interagency appeal has been launched to respond to the threat of an epidemic in 15 at-risk countries in 1997. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 150,000 cases of meningitis that resulted in 16,000 deaths, mainly children, were reported in 1996 in the "meningitis belt" that stretches from Senegal to Ethiopia.
Funds brought in by the appeal, which was launched by WHO together with other UN agencies, non-governmental organizations and technical partners under an International Coordinating Group (IGC) established in January, will be used to purchase vaccine and antibiotics and to help combat meningitis outbreaks. The IGC already has obtained commitments from manufacturers to reserve some 14 million doses of vaccine in 1997 for the meningitis control programme.
Reforms aim to sharpen focus on food security at FAO
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is being "radically changed" through a restructuring process that has been under way for the past three years, said Mr. Jacques Diouf, the UN organization's Director-General. "FAO is in the process of implementing what can only be termed as broad-based, fundamental reform," he told a 19 February news conference called to unveil a special report on the organization's reform efforts.
"FAO was too centralized, with too high a proportion of staff at headquarters," the report bluntly declared. "It lacked focus, with too many fragmented and diffuse efforts; it was encumbered with overly bureaucratic procedures...." Since 1994, FAO has cut 563 posts at headquarters and 63 in country offices, while staffing of regional, subregional and liaison offices has risen by 170 (many of them nationals replacing international programme staff).
Northern and Southern Africa post fertility rate declines
Accelerating a trend that began in the 1980s, women in both northern and Southern Africa are having fewer children. According to a report of the UN Secretary-General summarizing the 1996 update to the UN's World Population Prospects, the number of births per woman fell from 4.8 in 1985-90 to 4.1 in 1990-95 in northern Africa, a decline of 26.8 per cent, and from 4.5 to 4.2 in Southern Africa, a decline of 14.3 per cent. In all other regions of Africa, the total fertility rate was 6.4 in 1990-95, slightly below the figures for 1985-90.
Overall, Africa's population growth rate averaged 2.7 per cent annually in 1990-95, by far the highest in the world. Even if this growth rate is reduced to 1.1 per cent by the years 2045-50, Africa's projected population will rise to 2.1 billion by 2050, three times the level in 1995.
South Africa and Mozambique ban the use of landmines
South Africa and Mozambique announced unilateral decisions to end the manufacture, trade, stockpiling and use of anti-personnel landmines during a 25-28 February international conference in Maputo, Mozambique, which called for a Southern Africa free of landmines.
The fourth in a series of annual international meetings, the Maputo conference was organized by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a coalition of over 650 non-governmental organizations in 35 countries. At a follow-up 9-10 April meeting in Harare, a regional coordination committee, with one representative from each of the 12 members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), was set up to work on getting all SADC members to agree to a draft landmine ban treaty at a December 1997 conference to be hosted by Canada. The committee also aims for the elimination of landmines from the region.
Of the estimated 110 mn landmines buried in 70 countries – which maim or kill over 20,000 victims each year – over a third are in 21 African countries, 15 mn of them in Angola alone, 3 mn in Mozambique, and 1 mn each in Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia.
Growth alone won't end poverty, says World Bank
By Peter Svarre
At current economic growth rates it will take 50 years to double incomes in sub-Saharan Africa, but even such an increase is "not even remotely adequate for meaningful poverty reduction," according to Taking Action for Poverty Reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa, a report published recently by the World Bank.
In order to reduce the number of poor in the region, the Bank report recommends growth rates of 6.5 to 7.0 per cent per year. However, it warns that "relying on aggregate income growth as the sole means for reducing poverty in Africa will effectively postpone significant poverty reduction for the poorest for up to 50 years."
The report points out that it is time for the World Bank to focus on poverty alleviation, rather than on aggregate growth. Africa, the report notes, has the lowest "growth elasticity" in the world, with growth in national income having very little effect on overall poverty rates. In order to improve growth elasticity, development assistance from the World Bank must be invested in rural areas where the largest proportions of the poor live. Rural development "may not contribute as much to aggregate growth as investing in a higher potential region," the report says. "But such actions may be the only ones available to reduce poverty efficiently and sustainably."
In addition, greater investment in health and education is needed to boost the level of growth elasticity. Besides benefiting the poor directly, health and education programmes help the poor benefit more from aggregate economic growth. Finally the report recommends a focus on democratization and the empowerment of civil society. Without a stable social situation, it is impossible to achieve high rates of economic growth, the report says.
The report's author, Mr. Jack van Holst Pellekan, told Africa Recovery that he sees no inherent conflict between specific pro-poor policies, such as health and education programmes, and the aggregate growth policies needed to achieve the recommended high growth rates. "In the short term there might be some trade-offs between pro-poor programmes and structural adjustment programmes," said Mr. Pellekan. "But in the long term aggregate growth will be beneficial to poverty reduction programmes."
Mr. Pellekan did admit there is nothing fundamentally new in the World Bank approach to poverty reduction. "Structural adjustment programmes have been very successful," he said. "This report simply says that we need higher growth rates than previously believed, and that we need to improve already existing poverty reduction strategies."
Mr. Tony Avirgan, communication coordinator for the Washington-based Development Group for Alternative Policies, disagreed with this conclusion. "Structural adjustment programmes are doing enormous harm. The Bank has tried to create safety nets to reduce the negative effects of its programmes, but there is no evidence that it is pursuing actual pro-poor policies." Although Mr. Avirgan accused the poverty reduction strategies of the Bank as being "mere rhetoric," he acknowledged that "talk in itself can be good, and might eventually lead to action."