The challenge of Africa: ministers debate vicious cycle of poverty and conflict, new initiatives for development.

Faced with unrelenting impoverishment, marginalization and social strife engulfing Africa - home to the greatest proportion of least developed nations in the world - ministers from every region of the world convened during the 1995 session of the UN Economic and Social Council to tackle the complex range of interrelated issues and problems that have made the economic and social development of Africa a formidable challenge.

"Today, this continent often baffles the world by continually giving the international community reasons for alternating between hope and discouragement", UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said on 4 July in an address to the opening of the Council's three-day high-level segment, whose purpose is to set UN policy on major international matters.

Not only must Africa contend with an unwieldy debt burden, runaway population growth and environmental deterioration, but also "the African continent is still too often the scene of ethnic confrontations and civil wars that compound the existing poverty and underdevelopment", the Secretary-General continued, noting that there are currently 10 wars and internal conflicts underway and nearly 9 million refugees and displaced persons in Africa - the highest figure of any other continent. "Conflicts help to spawn poverty, and poverty is itself an undeniable factor in conflict. This vicious cycle absolutely has to be broken", he said.

During the 1980s, several regional and international initiatives - including the UN Programme of Action for African Economic Development - were launched, but most of them were only partly implemented. In 1991, the General Assembly adopted the UN New Agenda for the Development of Africa in the 1990s, with the hope that the end to the cold war would provide new and ample opportunities for international cooperation to halt Africa's downward spiral.

Mixed results

However, four years after the adoption of the New Agenda and one year before its mid-term review, the results are mixed, according to a report of the Secretary-General (E/1995/81) for consideration at the high-level segment, which notes that the social and economic situation in Africa on the whole continues to be unsatisfactory. The continent remains plagued by inadequate infrastructure, weak institutions, poorly utilized human resources, a great vulnerability to natural and climatic disasters, and the impact of unfavourable terms of trade.

According to the Secretary-General, while some short-term indicators, such as total output on the continent and the gross domestic product of some countries, "may appear satisfactory", structural weaknesses remain, the current improvement in growth rates is "too slight to compensate for the lag accumulated over 15 years of decline", and economic performance is "disappointing" even in countries that have made substantial reforms. For example, in 1994, the Assembly added Angola and Eritrea to the list of least developed countries, while only one African country, Botswana, moved out of that category. At present, 33 out of a total of 48 least developed countries are African.

Moreover, the continent's long-term debt amounts to $37 billion, accounting for half the outstanding debt of the entire third world. According to the World Bank, only 6 out of 21 most indebted African countries are able to repay their debt, even under the softest borrowing terms.

"In nearly all spheres, the problem is that the action taken has not always matched the needs", said 49th Assembly President Amara Essy at the high-level segment on 4 July. "Even relatively promising scenarios have culminated in the unacceptable prospect of an expansion of poverty. We must therefore set our sights higher, particularly as there is broad consensus on what is happening and on what needs to be done in the area of development in Africa."

Furthermore, the Secretary-General has outlined a number of priorities for UN action to sustain the development of Africa. Among them:

* Africa's regional structures must be strengthened, including cooperation between the UN and the Organization of African Unity.

* The economies of African countries must be diversified and their products be allowed access to foreign markets. "It must be fully recognized that Africa is the only region in the world that may be hurt by the Uruguay Round" of the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade, the Secretary-General said.

* The international community needs to take on the nagging problem of African debt and raise levels of assistance to the continent.

* The UN should help African countries establish effective social institutions and support the efforts of those countries to improve public education and vocational training. "Africa's population, far from being a handicap, is an inestimable resource and guarantor of its future, but only if enough food and medical attention are first of all assured," said the Secretary-General on 4 July. "These are the basic conditions of social development."

Another proposal - formulated in the World Economic and Social Survey, 1995 and advanced in the Secretary-General's report - calls for promotion of a "Green Revolution" in Africa by financing the development of high-yield food crops. While Asia and Latin America have seen large gains in the production of rice and wheat since the mid-1960s as a result of the increased use of new high-yield varieties, Africa has hardly benefited from this "Green Revolution". "This can be largely attributed to a lack of seeds suitable to Africa's conditions, weak local research capacity and a poorly developed support system to encourage adoption", according to the Survey.

Is Africa behind?

Declaring that Africa is a test case for the UN and for the Council's ability to address and resolve critical development issues, Council President Ahmad Kamal of Pakistan on 4 July posed several questions for consideration, among them: Why had Africa been left behind in the process of development? Why had industrialization largely bypassed the continent? Was it not true that one of the main elements of progress, the access to know-how and technology, was not available to much of Africa, as it was not to most developing countries?

In summarizing the high-level discussion, Mr. Kamal said Africa's problems could be resolved through better conflict prevention, management and resolution. Other vital requirements include a multi-pronged debt relief strategy tailored to each country's specific situation and financial flows, particularly foreign direct investment, as well as an increased share in international trade for Africa. He also stressed the importance of achieving food security for all Africans and human resources development and institution building, which translated practical terms to investment in education and training.