ceremonies being performed to commemorate the Silver Jubilee Anniversary of the Economic Comission for Africa (ECA).
I therefore have the singular honour and the pleasant duty of transmitting the brotherly greetings and sincere wishes he extends on his own behalf and on behalf of the Government and people of Niger for the success of our current meeting.
It also gives me pleasure to extend to H. E. Col. Mengistu Haile-Mariam, Chairman of the Provisional Military Administrative Council, Chairman of the Commission for Organiz
ing the Party of the Working People of Ethiopia and Commander-in-Chief of the Revolu
tionary Army of Socialist Ethiopia and through his august person, to the courageous people of Ethiopia, the profound gratitude of my delegation for the warm welcome it has enjoyed as well as all the care that has been devoted to its comfort since its arrival in Addis Ababa, the beautiful and proud capital of independent Africa.
Distinguished Heads of State and Government, Honourable Ministers and Delegates, It is with genuine pleasure that Niger joins in the ceremonies marking the 25th Anniver
sary of ECA, one of the oldest institutions on our continent and one whose role and ac
tivities have unquestionably made it possible to develop and consolidate in the minds of African leaders and peoples the ideals of African Unity.
When it was established in 1958, at a time when the vast majority of States represented in this Hall were still under the colonial yoke, ECA became, it must be stressed, the first form in which inter-African solidarity was organized and the first forum within which our Governments began together to ponder on the common destiny of the African people. With time, after our countries attained independence and the Organization of African Unity was born, it became the catalyst in mobilizing international assistance for our young States, many of which found themselves facing new challenges for which they were not prepared and with which they could hardly cope by themselves because of the degree of their impoverishment and the embryonic nature of their political, administrative and economic systems.
The role played by ECA in those early years of African independence deserves to be emphasized and commended at this point because it did contribute to building and con
solidating the fragile sovereignty of our nations.
However, ECA was soon to go beyond the local vision of problems facing African countries and to tackle the general situation of Africa and to seek comprehensive solutions to its many difficulties in order to place a unifying stamp on Africa's development. In so
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doing, EGA, along with the assistance it provides in the implementation of national projects, has encouraged the establishment of subregional customs and economic unions, joint train
ing institutes and an African Development Bank.
At the same time, EGA has put remarkable effort into comprehensive studies touching on all areas of economic, social and cultural life in our countries. An almost complete in
ventory has been compiled of our resources and of measures to be taken to deal with the problems facing us. Specific and quantified projects have also been prepared.
This substantial brain storming effort which has been held against the backdrop of such cities as Monrovia, Dakar, Nairobi and Rabat, to cite only a few, culminated in the conven
ing and holding at Lagos in 1980, of the first Extraordinary Assembly of OAU Heads of State and Government devoted exclusively to Africa's economic problems.
Distinguished Head of State and Government, Honourable Ministers and Delegates,
Observers are today unanimous in viewing that extraordinary meeting of Africa's highest-ranking leaders as an important stage in the collective efforts made by our countries to secure that economic and social well-being to which the African peoples legitimately people, low productivity levels, widespread illiteracy, malnutrition, high levels of mortality, an alarming growth of unemployment, extreme dependence on the outside world and many other ills. This led the participants in the Monrovia Symposium on Africa's Development Prospects by the year 2000 to say that Africa which was known for its life and gaiety had in equal measure its share of the cold reality of death — children dying en masse and people meeting violent deaths. This catastrophic outlook is no figment of the imagination.
The facts are on record, testifying to the past and defying both the present and the fu
ture.
Mr. Ghairman,
There is a saying that it is easier to criticise than to create. So as I said earlier, while the Lagos meeting enabled us to conduct an unflattering criticism of ourselves and of the serious economic -situation for our continent and the responsibilities which devolved on us in the matter, it also was marked by a spirit of decision, commitment and resolution that made a clean break with our gropings of the past. This is the second dimension which deserves our consideration.
The adoption of the Lagos Plan of Action and Final Act of Lagos came after a serious diagnosis of our strengths and weaknesses. It came from a unifying and global vision of development based on the realization that, individually, our States could achieve no sig
nificant economic and social progress and that the circumstances required the pooling of our efforts. The Plan covers all aspects of Africa's economic life and proposes concrete measures to be taken for self-sustaining development aimed at the following objectives:
(a) Making the national development process more democratic so that we might more fully and equitably enjoy the fruits of our labour;
(b) Achieving a high degree of self-reliance;
(c) Increasing and strengthening African solidarity;
(d) And in so doing, gain greater influence in world affairs.
It is definitely a great step forward for Africa to have designed and formulated such a plan which fits harmoniously into its efforts to unite.
Convinced of their rightness, the Government of Niger attaches the greatest importance to translating into reality the choices made under the Lagos Plan of Action. I am convinced development activities conducted throughout the length and breadth of Africa has a primary role to play.
To play that role, the effort to be made should aim at identifying those programmes considered as top priorities and which in the common interest should be implemented forth
with. Those programmes of secondary importance could wait until the world economic situation has eased.
In the view of my Government, therefore, our top priority should be to strive for food self-sufficiency because that involves the very survival of our continent.
In addition to famine, malnutrition and inadequate food production we now have the disasterous effects of desertification and the terrible drought which has for some years now been raging over whole areas of Africa sparing neither man, beast nor plant.
For these reasons, the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations described Africa's general current food situation as explosive when opening the eighth session of the World Food Security Committee on 13 April 1983 at Rome.
ECA's effort in the struggle for food self-sufficiency should focus on providing optimum assistance for the implementation of major water harnessing projects in all the areas and against the development of our States, inter-African co-operation and seriously curtailing
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our participation in international trade. In this regard it is comforting to note that on the in
itiative of ECA, the United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed the period 1978-1988 the «Transport and Communications Decade in Africa» and assigned it the objectives of;
(a) Improving transport and communications infrastructures;
(b) Minimizing the isolation of landlocked and island countries; and
(c) Stimulating the production of transport and communications equipment in Africa.
As a landlocked country right in the middle of Africa and located in an area particularly difficult to reach, Niger has always advocated an African transport and communications policy aimed at opening up all the regions of our continent through the development of road, rail, air and maritime networks.
This is why my Government diligently supports the implementation in our subregion of two key transport and communications projects. One in the trans-Saharan Highway project which will link the northern to the western part of the continent and the Pan-African telecommunications network project.
Similarly, my Government has for years and in concert with the Governments of such sister countries as Benin, the Ivory Coast, the Upper Volta and Togo been working seriously on the construction of a railway network which, by serving our respective capitals, will at the same time strengthen the common destiny of our peoples.
Mr. Chairman,
At this juncture please allow me to raise another important issue which cannot be divorced from any serious development policy. I am talking about education and training.
Fortunately in these areas, we have some reason for satisfaction. Thanks to the con
siderable efforts that our respective Governments have been making since 1960, 70 per cent of our children can attend primary school as compared to 11 per cent in 1961. In that same year, barely 3 per cent of our young people had access to secondary schooling, but today, the figure is in the neighbourhood of 16 per cent. In contrast, the figure for higher education which accounts for 1.8 per cent of total enrolment in secondary school has been very low.
These encouraging results obtained in education were achieved because we paid the price.
Indeed, from 1961 to 1977, our States devoted on average from 20 to 30 per cent of their budget allocations to education. This is doubtless a performance which speaks well of us but which should be further improved upon if Man is truly the crucial factor in development and is at the same time the instrument and purpose of that process.
I would be failing in my duty if I did not highlight, at this juncture, a commendable ef
fort that ECA has made in the area of training by establishing an Institute for Economic Planning and Development, a Centre for Aerial Surveying and Mapping and an African In
stitute for Higher Technical Training and Research, to name a few. Those efforts deserve to be continued and intensified.
perience of multilateral co-operation pursued by the West African MULPOC.
We acknowledge the full importance of the international and regional co-operation that our Commission has been championing these past 25 years.
Allow me on this solemn occasion to pay a deserved tribute to Mr. Adebayo Adedeji, our Executive Secretary, to his colleagues and the many experts of ECA who in a great spirit of sacrifice and exemplary devotion have made it possible to achieve the successes that have been recorded in the course of the period.
Beyond these festivities, however, we consider this gathering of distinguished political leaders of our continent as the ideal platform for bringing fresh thinking to bear on the ex
perience acquired in these 25 years of searching for African collective self-reliance through the harmonization of regional, subregional and national activities.
Economic development should remain one of the basic tasks which we have set oursel
ves to perform on our march to freedom. It is our duty to make the greatest sacrifice to bridge the enormous gap between our impoverished countries and the highly industrialized nations of the northern hemisphere.
This challenge is what the Supreme Military Council and the Government of Niger under the able leadership of President Seyni Kountche has been striving to translate into reality by setting up the Spciete de developpement in Niger.
United, galvanized and inspired by faith in a better future for Niger, our people are preparing themselves, within the framework of the Sociäß de developpement, to wage with every determination to win, the decisive battle for their economic and social advancement. of the structures of the Socie'tö de dtveloppement. Those structures are already operating at the grassroots level, the cornerstone for all development activities, in which lies the key to success.
The country-wide debate which preceded and accompanied the establishment of those structures enabled our people to contribute the full measure of their political maturity. It
continuing to look like a grand forum where a lot of posturing, clamory and wishing goes on but where nothing ever happens.»
This urgent call to unity and to genuine and active solidarity deserves to be renewed be
cause both one and the other are becoming, in these days of major upheaval in the general trend of world affairs, imperative values that our continent must adopt.
Let us then seize this historic opportunity to demonstrate a high sense of political maturity and impregnable cohesion in our ranks. Let us resolutely work with all our might and strength to build a better future for our continent.