UN Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs,
with support from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA)
|
| UN Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, with support from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) |
|
**************************************************************************
The electronic version of this statement is being made available by the
Population Information Network (POPIN) of the United Nations Population
Division (DESIPA), and the Pan African Development Information System
(PADIS) of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. For
further information please contact Ms. Nancy Hafkin via email at
hafkin.uneca@un.org
***************************************************************************
Opening Statement by
Mr. K. Y. Amoako
Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa
at the opening of the
Ninth conference of African Planners,
Statisticians, and population and Information Scientists
Addis Ababa, 11-16 March 1996
Mr. Chairman,
Distinguished participants,
Ladies and gentlemen,
This Conference, now in its ninth session, is unique among ECA
legislated meetings in that it regularly convenes experts from
different disciplines with one overall interest: building African
socio-economic development. On a biennial basis, ECA brings together
planners, staticians, population and information specialists (who are
all now reflected in the Conference's change of name, adopted in
1994) to examine the economic and social situation of the region
since the last meeting and reflect on the ways in which the different
disciplines represented can intervene together to improve planning,
with the end result of an improved African economic and social
situation. ECA also convenes this Conference to garner your advice
on what strategic interventions ECA can make to help African member
States in their efforts to meet the challenges of development
planning.
Distinguished delegates
Observers, and
Representatives of Agencies
Since the last meeting of the Conference in March 1994, the
socio-economic situation in the African region has improved only
slightly. According to ECA's estimates, Africa's Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) grew by 2.2 per cent in 1995, as compared to 1.6 per
cent in 1994 and only 0.8 per cent in 1993. Had it not been for a
series of noneconomic setbacks, including regional conflicts and
civil strife, drought and other natural calamities, the economic
performance of the region would have been better.
Looking at the economy regionally and by sectors, agricultural
output virtually stagnated in 1995 after the exceptionally good
growth performance of 3.5 per cent in 1994. With per capita food
production falling by 2.6 per cent, Africa's food security continues
to give cause for anxiety. In 1995 alone cereal production fell by
15 per cent. Manufacturing output dropped as well, by 3.7 per cent
in 1994 and 2.8 per cent in 1995, due to a combination of factors
including low levels of investment and inherent structural
weaknesses. Industrial decline, plant closures and capacity under
utilisation, regular features of the African industrial scene since
the 1980's, characterized 1994 and 1995 as well. The poor
performance of the agricultural and industrial sectors, the
cornerstones of African economies, heightens our concern about the
sustainability of growth and development in the region.
Improved GDP growth in 1995 came mostly from the mining sector.
Oil prices increased by 12 per cent and the volume of production grew
slightly, while metal prices rose by 20 per cent. After stagnating
in 1994, African exports grew by nearly 16 per cent in 1995, as a
result of rising commodity prices and external demand generated by
the economic recovery of OECD countries. African export prices rose
by 10.5 per cent in 1995, double the growth rate of 1994. Import
prices also rose by 7.2 per cent in 1995 as compared with 3.8 per
cent in 1994. As a result the terms of trade improved by 3 per cent
1995, an increase over the two per cent improvement of the previous
year.
Adverse external conditions also negatively affected regional
growth. For most of the 1990's, external resource flows stagnated,
and commercial lending dropped; official bilateral and multilateral
assistance now accounts for the bulk of resource flows to Africa.
Official resource flows declined from US$ 22 billion in 1990 to US$
20 billion in 1993, at which level they have remained since. Thus
even official resource flows have dropped, while external debt has
been rising. In 1994, Africa's external debt reached US$ 312
billion, an increase of about 1. 5 per cent over the 1990 level. On
the other hand, debt relief measures are still too marginal and too
little. The payments of accumulated arrears and changes in interest
rates have eaten up most of the anticipated relief. Debt servicing
now exceeds 30 per cent of export earnings for most African
countries. The effects of the heavy debt burden arc a worsening
balance of payments position, fiscal imbalances, scarcities and
rampant inflation.
Africa's social situation continues to deteriorate. Armed
conflicts and political crises continue to disrupt production and
social services in many countries. Political and civil strife take
up too much of Africa's energy; they seriously affect Africa's fiscal
position, investment and its use, and the capacity of its
governments, to deliver even the most basic services. Governments
have had to make severe cuts in education and health and medical care
at a time when some 220 million Africans live in absolute poverty.
If these trends continue unabated, African economic growth will be
too low to create enough jobs for the growing labour force and to
support sustainable human-centred development. Those parts of Africa
where determined efforts at restoring peace and social order are now
showing positive signs are most encouraging.
Your meeting is taking place at a time when the world at large
is undergoing considerable geopolitical changes that seek to set new
rules for international economic cooperation. With the recently
signed General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT), world trade is
expected to increase to at least US$ 210 billion annually, of which
30 per cent will be shared by developing countries. In the short-run
Africa will benefit the least of all the world's regions, given its
weak capacity to respond to new opportunities created by the emerging
international trading environment. Production structures in Africa
do not lend themselves to global competitiveness. To benefit from
the post Uruguay Round, it is imperative that Africa reform and
modernize its production structures to produce goods which are
competitive in world markets.
Africa's marginalised position in the world economy makes its
pursuit of economic integration fundamental to its development. We
hope that the treaty establishing the African Economic Community will
go a long way to alleviating the region's economic difficulties.
From cooperative arrangements among existing sub-regional groupings,
there needs to be rapid movement toward the economic integration of
the entire region. In the Cairo Agenda for Action African
governments have reaffirmed their commitment to the goals of the
regional economic community.
Midway through the period of the United Nations-New Agenda for
the Development of Africa (UN-NADAF), Africa has not yet grappled
successfully with the issues of international trade, finance, and
technology in a new setting of international economic cooperation.
To reach the goals of the New Agenda, African Governments need to
adopt appropriate policies and forge new partnerships especially with
multilateral and bilateral funding agencies. To enforce UN-NADAF,
the United Nations is this week launching the System-Wide Special
Initiative for Africa. You will be participants in the launch, which
will take place in this room at 5:30 p.m on Friday, with a
simultaneous video link between New York and Addis Ababa. Throughout
the week you will be hearing more about The Special Initiative which
should give a new impetus to Africa's development with a concerted
international effort for resource mobilization. The Initiative will
encompass enhancing food security, reducing poverty, harnessing
information technology for development, increasing trade access and
opportunities and assuring debt relief. If these efforts are
successful, they will go a long way towards pulling Africa from its
present quagmire to a bright future.
Distinguished delegates,
It is imperative for Africa as a whole to move faster on the
road of economic development. Structural deficiencies including
weak, dysfunctional institutional structures and fragmented
production bases characterize most African economies. Given their
small scale as well, it would be hard to expect individual
Governments to achieve significant breakthroughs towards socio-
economic transformation or to resolve strategic problems such as
those of food and energy supply. Only through expanded
cooperation for development can the region attain the goals it has
set for itself and that its people need to raise themselves from
poverty. Why is it that after four decades of political and
economic independence Africa cannot master its own natural
substantial resource base to achieve decent levels of self-
sufficiency in basic needs such as food, energy and basic
industrial inputs?
In your last meeting you addressed the need to resolve
Africa's food problems in a cooperative context. This meeting
will discuss the important issue of how to foster energy
development. Although Africa's energy resources are considerable,
their unequal distribution makes the case for increased
cooperation imperative. In spite of the enormous and unexploited
potential, the region's energy, production fluctuates directly
with the demand of industrialized countries while it obtains most
of its own energy requirements from outside the region. The
agenda of this meeting addresses this issue.
As you are aware, Africa has abandoned development planning
or crisis management for most of the period of the 80's and 90's.
Over the last two years African countries have continued to
undertake major domestic structural reform measures aimed at
achieving improved fiscal and monetary management and reducing
external debt. The emphasis in several reform programmes was on
increased incentives for savings, measures to stimulate investment
and empowerment of the private sector to accelerate the
socioeconomic transformation. To enhance structural reform,
Governments must reconcile short-term management goals with medium
and long-term development requirements in programmes dealing with
policy design and macroeconomic management. I invite your meeting
to consider ways and means of strengthening the analytical
framework for policy reform.
Mr. Chairman
Distinguished participants,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Let me turn to the issue of population. Although Africa has
slightly more than one-tenth of world's population, its population
growth rates are higher than anywhere else in the world.
Persistently high levels of fertility, which show no sign of
abating in most of Africa, result from early childbearing,
closeness of births, low levels of contraception to reduce and
space births, cultural values accorded to children and the role
and status of women, among other factors. Mortality and morbidity
levels, too, remain higher in Africa than anywhere else.
The health of people in Africa has been deteriorating
recently as well due to economic malaise, resurgence of infectious
and communicable diseases such as malaria, cholera and many
ailments associated with poverty. The rapid spread of HIV which
causes AIDS has resulted in great socio-economic and cultural
breakdown of the fabric of African societies.
The influx of migrants from rural areas to urban centres in
search of a better life has contributed to overcrowding of towns
and cities, causing unbearably poor health conditions. Numerous
outbreaks of waterborne diseases occur because of inadequate
sanitary facilities and unsafe drinking water. Environmental
conditions have deteriorated in most of the region's countries
because of poor levels of technology, lack of knowledge about
better management of environment and prevailing conditions of
poverty.
In all this, the hopeful signs are that in a few countries
across Africa fertility levels have started to decline.
Since the last session of this Conference in 1994, the
International Conference on Population and Development was held in
Cairo, Egypt. That Conference adopted the Programme of Action for
Development (ICPD.PA) that included (1) reproductive health and
family planning and (2) health, morbidity and mortality reduction.
Regarding reproductive and family planning, countries have agreed
to strive for expanded coverage and services accessible to all
through the primary health care system (PHC). In the area of
improving health and reducing mortality, the programme emphasizes
the reduction of infant, child and maternal morbidity and
mortality rates. Both the Dakar/Ngor, adopted at the third
African Population Conference, and the Cairo programmes of Action
agreed upon mortality reduction targets that African countries
should strive to achieve by the turn of the century.
The third area of major concern in the ICPD.PA is that of
increasing access to education, especially for girls. Research
has shown that the education and training of girls is one of the
most critical investments in sustainable development. I therefore
urge you to strive to achieve goals of universal primary education
for all with increased access to secondary and higher education
for girls and women.
In June 1995, less than a year after the Cairo Conference,
ECA, with support from the Governments of France and the
Netherlands, UNFPA, African Development Bank (ADB) and IPPF, met
with many of you as experts at the ICPD Africa Region Follow-up
Conference in Abidjan. The Abidjan Workshop of Experts helped to
put in place the framework to implement both the Dakar/Ngor
Declaration and the ICPD. PA.
Matters related to the implementation of the Cairo and the
Dakar/Ngor frameworks feature on your agenda, in particular
guidelines for monitoring and evaluating implementation of
national population development programmes.
Regarding the interface between population and environment,
this meeting will assess problems and policies associated with the
urban environment, the consequences of rapid urbanization for the
lives of city dwellers and on national economies. You will also
examine environmental problems associated with waste disposal and
settlements in order to recommend pragmatic solutions.
Policies to reduce population growth, in combination with
other efforts to accelerate socio-economic development, can go a
long way to alleviate poverty and improve the quality of life in
Africa. In this Conference you will be discussing the perception
of family planning in the context of African socio-economic goals
and cultural values. Obstacles to implementing policies and
programmes of family planning need to be overcome. When this
happens, the result will be better implementation of effective
development programmes.
You should also be aware of the new orientation in delivery
of ECA's advisory services supported by UNFPA in the areas of
population and statistics. Since 1992 ECA advisers have located
in Addis Ababa, Dakar and Harare where they form County Support
Teams (CSTs) with other experts from WHO, ILO, UNESCO, UNFPA and
some NGOs. This change was brought about by the decisions of the
UNFPA Governing Council.
There have been some problems hindering implementation of
some of ECA's population activities. Notable among these is that
associated with the dissemination of population information.
UNFPA previously provided resources for this activity, but this is
no longer the situation. Some bilateral funds have been provided
by the French Government, but they were inadequate to do the job
effectively. This is an area where we would like to improve our
performance in the biennium 1996-1997.
We have also had problems in the area of demographic training
and research. Both IFORD, based in Yaounde, and RIPS, based in
Accra, need increased financial resources in order to operate
effectively and meet increasing demands for trained manpower and
qualified teaching staff. This Conference should recommend
actions to alleviate difficulties at these ECA-established
regional demographic institutes.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Since the adoption in 1992 of the Addis Ababa Plan of action
for Statistical Development in Africa in the 1990's and the
Strategy for its implementation by the twenty seventh session of
the UNECA Conference of Ministers responsible for economic
development and planning, ECA and the numerous other players
engaged in African statistical development have undertaken
significant groundwork and achieved a measure of organizational
progress. As you know, the Strategy provides a comprehensive
framework for efforts to rehabilitate, revitalise and develop
African statistics and to build statistical capacities in the
region. This meeting will consider progress made in the
implementation of the Addis Ababa Plan of Action and propose
measure to accelerate the process.
The Coordinating Committee, on African Statistical
Development (CASD) and four subcommittees have been established to
support national, efforts in planning, appraising and implementing
statistical development programmes and activities. ECA serves as
the secretariat of CASD. While CASD has made progress in these
areas, some problems remain. More efforts need to be made for
CASD to implement its mandate successfully.
Two areas on your agenda require your particular attention.
These are: the Statistical Needs Assessment and Strategy
Development (NASD) and the results of the pilot analysis of the
regional survey of statistical organization and training.
The first step recommended at the national level by the Addis
Ababa Plan of Action is the undertaking of a Needs Assessment and
Strategy Development exercise to discover primary users' current
and future data needs and determine how national statistical
systems can try to meet those needs. We are finding that African
Statistical Services find the NASD guidelines very useful. Ten
countries have already conducted NASD exercises, and nine others
have plans to do so.
In the area of statistical organization and training, the
results of the Pilot Analysis summarize the views of Directors of
National Statistical Offices on training of their staff and
organizational relationships within national statistical systems.
In your discussions you may wish to focus on ways in which African
countries can better organize their statistical services and take
advantage of available training opportunities to meet the
unsatisfied training needs of their staff.
The present Conference will also pay particular attention to
the important issue of the implementation of the 1003 System of
National Accounts (SNA). In adopting the 1993 SNA, the United
Nations Statistical Commission urged member states to consider
using it as the international standard for the compilation of
national accounts statistics, as an analytical tool and to promote
the integration of economic and related statistics. ECA has
played a major role in promoting and monitoring SNA implementation
in the Africa region. Member States have made commendable efforts
in the production of tables and accounts on Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) and Goods and Services. However, serious deficiencies which
reduce their utility still exist in the National Accounts of most
African countries. I recommend that you work out concrete
measures to be taken at the national level for the development and
integration of basic statistics, including training of national
experts and mobilization of necessary resources.
I urge you to apply your experience and expertise to all these
issues to build sustainable national statistical development
within the framework of the Addis Ababa Plan of Action for
Statistical Development in the 1990's.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Regarding the information sector in Africa, more and more
African planners and decision makers are coming to see that Africa
must become part of the Information Age to remain competitive and
part of an international economic order. The most developed
countries have moved beyond both agriculture and industry into
information based economies. The nature of the information age,
with its elimination of barriers of time and distance, means that
the economy has become truly global. Suppliers can obtain
necessary inputs regardless of country of origin on a "just in
time" basis. For Africa to export even its primary commodities,
it needs access to current information on a daily basis (if not
more often). Development and utilization of information
technology are inextricably linked. There is no longer a choice.
If African countries do not take part in the revolution in
information and communication technologies, which are becoming
daily more the same phenomenon, their economic and social
marginalization will increase. The positive side of the challenge
is that if African countries choose to develop policies,
strategies and programmes in this area, the capital investment
costs are far lower than in other sectors, and the opportunities
greater for using the new technologies to leapfrog to improved
growth and sustainable development. Rapidly declining costs of
many information and communications technologies will revolutionize
the prospects for numerous aspects of social and economic
development.
There is increasing evidence that applications of the
information technology are spreading in many poor countries around
the world and producing many benefits. Information technology is
increasing the scope and quality for long distance learning by
making it possible to share educational facilities including
teachers, whose store of knowledge can be accessed via on-line
facilities or CD-ROMS. Information technology is also reducing
the time it takes to identify and exploit opportunities for trade,
investment and finance.
For this to take place requires a composite of measures.
Inadequate telecommunications systems must be replaced. A
critical mass of trained persons in fields such as computers, data
management, science, engineering and business is needed. Laws and
regulations that impede the flow of information and information
technology must be reformed.
Enhancing Africa's capacity to access rapidly the global
system of knowledge and information must be built upon a system of
timely, reliable and easily accessible data and information at the
national level. This means the creation or strengthening of the
national information content, especially national data bases, both
statistical and textual.
Last year's conference of Ministers of Planning passed a
resolution entitled "Building Africa's Information Highway" which
requested ECA to form an Expert Group to put together an African
Action Plan on using information and communication technologies to
accelerate socio-economic development. Your Conference will be
the peer review for that plan, which will be presented this
afternoon, prior to its delivery to the Ministers next month.
The Conference will also be looking at the work that ECA has
been doing to promote the development of information systems in
Africa, at the importance of Africa organizing its information
using appropriate norms and standards so that it is not inundated
by information from developed countries as the Information Highway
arrives, and at the details of information and communication
technologies easily available to Africa. A special feature of
this Conference will be the incorporation of a two and one-half
day workshop on "data dissemination," organized by the U. S.
Bureau of the Census, incorporating the latest information and
communication techniques.
In realization of the importance of information in African
development, in its forthcoming reorganization, "harnessing
information for development" will become one of five strategic
programmes in which ECA proposes to focus its efforts.
This, then, is the preview of the challenges that the region
faces, the work that ECA is doing to meet them, and the
contributions that you will be making to surmount them both in the
current Conference and as you continue your important work upon
your return to your home institutions and countries. In
recognition of your arduous task, I declare the ninth Conference
of African Planners, Statisticians and Information and Population
Specialist open.