As Egypt joins its 49 other African sisters to celebrate the Silver Jubilee of the Economic Commission for Africa, Egypt does so with a certain pride because of its con
tribution to the establishment of ECA in 1958 as one of the nine original independent African founding members. We envisaged ECA to be the appropriate and effective framework for necessary co-operation with the UN system in the application of the doctrines of interdependence and mutual aid; it was our hope that ECA would also face up to the many economic challenges confronting the African continent; that ECA would try to choose appropriate solutions and co-ordinate different possibilities and options with a view to help
ing the African man catch up with the 20th and 21st century cavalcade of progress and to seeing Africa take off economically.
Egypt saw its vocation in Africa as helping the many African liberation movements gain their political independence; together with those newly independent African States, it watched the growth of ECA from childhood to maturity; it also watched its membership countries, in the fields of agriculture, transport and communications, industry, banking, trade, education, commerce and the like. It should be of interest to you to know that 1,086 African students are currently studying at the Al-Azhar University of Cairo, that there are 616 other African students studying at other secular Egyptian universities; that 4,500 African pupils are studying in other institutions lower than the university. It is noteworthy with 11 scholarships to be used at the Executive Secretary's own discretion to be distributed among African scholars and trainees in the fields of the study of the Arabic language, economic planning, social training, and other fields of endeavour of ECA. Egypt also con
tributed $US 75,000 to ECA at the Rabat Pledging Conference.
Mr. Chairman,
May I be permitted a few words in yet another field of endeavour related to the work of ECA in which Egypt can also take pride. Alexandria, Egypt, houses what has been called the Arab Maritime Transport Academy (AMTA), which was established in 1972 as a result of an agreement for technical co-operation with UNDP, IMO and UNCTAD. Between 1972 and 1979, the Alexandria Academy extended training services to more than 10,000 students from 20 Arab countries, including Egyptians of course. As a result of the stand taken by certain Arab countries vis-ä-vis Egypt after 1979, the Alexandria Academy was instructed to devote all of its facilities to the service of sister African countries. Between 1979 and 1983, the Alexandria Academy extended fellowship to 760 nationals from 20 African countries at a cost of $US 2.5 million. A total of 190 students from different African countries are now
(a) two experts to the Ivory Coast Maritime High School;
(b) four experts to the Nigerian Maritime College;
(c) one expert to the Ghana Nautical College.
Senior members of the Alexandria Academy visited Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Zim
babwe, Zambia, Mauritius, Tanzania, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Gabon and Madagascar to ac
quaint the competent authorities of these countries with the training facilities available at the Alexandria Academy, and to explore areas of future co-operation, under the aegis of the first "International Economic Co-operation Conference" was held under the chairman
ship of the late President Nasser, and it was in Cairo that the first call was made in 1961 to shift the attention of non-aligned and third world countries from mere achievement of political independence to the necessity for coupling this with economic independence as well. This clarion call gave momentum to and cut out the future programme of action for independence and the need to bolster their already gained political independence; let us not forget the memory of Nasser.
However, impediments to integration in Africa are many:
(a) The complete lack of transport, communication and other infrastructure;
(b) Current production and trade patterns provide minimal intra-regional complemen
tarity;
(c) Present service networks are geared towards servicing the prevailing production and trade patterns linking African countries with the old metropolises rather than with one another;
(d) Financial resources needed to initiate new patterns and to forge new intra-regional links are lacking;
(e) Different and contradictory paths and approaches to development followed by dif
ferent African countries;
(f) Political rivalry, etc.
There has also been a proliferation of conflicting or often contradictory, or to say the least, not complementary, organizations at both the regional and subregional levels in Africa. Most reflect the traces of the colonial past or are a simple continuation or revival of the old metropolitani scheme of things in Africa; they are mainly concerned with the
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liberalization of trade and not with increasing production and the number of exports or en
hancing development; they also do not have target dates for achieving their objectives.
Mr. Chairman,
Allow me to say a few words on African regional and subregional groupings.
Thirty-six regional and subregional groupings and institutions have mushroomed under the protective umbrella of ECA, outside it, or were set up even before its establishment.
But whereas ECA's real and natural objectives were the establishment of regional groupings fostering and aiming at the most essential and most badly needed targets of increasing food and energy production, laying down communication and transport infrastructure, the ac
cumulation and pooling of resources and investment capital and of foreign investment, in
creasing intraregional and intra-African trade, mining and industry through the expansion or creation of sufficiently and economically viable markets of production and consumption, unfortunately many of the mushrooming and prohferating regional or subregional African groupings were simply content with the removal of customs or trade barriers or the liberalization of trade. These are worthy goals in themselves; but in an economy as backward and as poor as Africa's, those marginal goals are inadequate and fall short of the most badly needed inmediate targets of self-sufficiency, production increases, fairer distribu
tion and the enhancement of exports. They do not attain the goals of widening African markets, increasing food, energy and industrial productivity, accumulating investment funds and increasing intra-regional African trade.
Many of those trade areas have not succeeded in uplifting their aggregate of in
traregional trade beyond 2 or 3 per cent of the conglomerate trade of the members of the region or subregion. Intraregional African trade has not exceeded 4 or 5 per cent. The trade of the whole of the African continent is still geared towards the outside world.
Seventy-five per cent of Africa's trade goes to the OECD countries alone. And this despite the efforts of ECA and the proliferation of so-called African regional or subregional group
ings.
In fact, these groupings should be established on legitimate scientific and economic grounds such as the community of natural resources, the possible complementarity of economic and social structures, the sharing of water resources from lake basins and rivers, the common exploitation of subterranean resources, in other words, essentials for a poten
tial common market or markets with viable entities and increased possibilities for the inter
change of more productivity, of more export capabilities, of wider market consumption capabilities; above all, the groupings ought to be set up on the basis of good neighbourli
ness and similarity of cultural and political approaches. There is an urgent need to review all existing regional and subregional groupings with a view to restructuring African economies for greater organic balance.
We see ECA as the new catalyst, and as the sponsor and advocate of a revision of some of those hackneyed arbitrary non-economic and non-social divisions.
There may be groupings around lake basins or river basins or mineral resources or other national resources which transcend by far the theoretical conglomeration of 20 or more East, Central or West African States; they also transcend by far the lumping together of an economic unit of five North Saharan African States which may share language and common culture but very little else economically or politically. Here of course I am not referring to the great Maghreb scheme which is different from the theoretical lumping together of five North African States. A greater endogenization and internationalization in the African economy is becoming a precondition for and synonymous with development. Domestic mar
kets must be widened and mainly for export promotion.
This requires enormous capital accumulation and investments, regional co-operation in
water resources development, productivity and flexibility in manpower movement. It needs simultaneous growth in the manufacturing, transport and export sectors. Regional co-opera
tion should not be geared to trade expansion alone; it should also aim at easier movement, greater productivity and self sufficiency. The post-independence generations of regional heterogeneous groupings point to the need for a gradual homogenization of existing viable ones, or the dissolution of existing heterogeneous blocs. The relevant theory for an African common market should therefore be that of development and not trade.
Africa has been fragmented into a number of subregions according to old external politi
cal and economic interests and control. There was and there still is little interconnection among those various subregions, with perhaps the exception of East and Central Africa. It is true that new groupings emanating mostly from pan-Africanist integration objectives have recently emerged. However, changes in the arbitrary old colonial patterns are still mar
ginal. The essence of the inherited continent with wide integration structures covering North, South, East, West and Central Africa still dominates. These organizations do not constitute a hierarchy. They all run parallel to one another. Except for OAU and ECA, there is no major African organization endowed with continent-wide competence especially in the planning, co-ordination and implementation of African integrationist policies. There are no formal horizontal or vertical economic relationships within the existing mesh or net
work of so many African regional or subregional groupings. Many even have conflicting economic or political interests.
If the above-mentioned horizontal compartmentalization or lumping, together of five North African States made some cultural or linguistic sense but not much economic sense, on the contrary, the vertical compartmentalization of some nine East African States has al
ways made historical reality and geographical sense and does make much economic and political sense, built on the eternal factor of the Nile.
This is a scientific truth recognized already by many international economic and social organizations. This is a vertical almost continent-wide embryo organization already en
dowed with the beginnings of a central authority charged with planning, co-ordination and implementation.
In his book "The River War" published in 1902, Sir Winston Churchill compared the Nile system to a long palm tree, with its roots in Lake Victoria and the surrounding regions where the river Nile found its sources, its stem in the long White Nile in the Sudan, and its fruit-bearing branches in the Delta region in Egypt.
Indeed, if one looks at the map of the Nile, one will readily see the aptness of the simile. Winston Churchill went on to say that the branches would bear no fruit and would wither away if they were cut off from their roots and the stem. The latter, in turn, would remain unfulfilled and fruitless if the branches were cut off from them.
Egypt is physically and organically tied to Central and East Africa. Whereas the great African desert constitutes or constituted a physical barrier between North Africa on the one hand and Black Africa down beneath on the other hand, no such barrier existed between
tion of the Nile, to benefit from and distribute its waters fairly, and improve its administra
tion. Much more needs to be done, but the trail has been blazed and landmarks have been set to achieve this most worthy goal. Hopefully with the help of ECA, this can be done.
All beneficiaries have started holding technical meetings at the experts level to study and find common answers to the problems of managing the mighty river.
A long-standing tradition of co-operation between Egypt and the Sudan on the one hand and other Nile beneficiaries on the other has enabled Egyptian engineers to participate in the building of Nile dams,irrigation works from Uganda down to the Sudan. Egyptian en
gineering task forces are stationed in the Sudan, up to the Owen Falls and Lake Victoria.
Together with their Sudanese counterparts, they are now engaged in digging the huge Jongli Canal in the Sudd region in Southern Sudan. A Permanent Joint Technical Commission has already been established between Egyptian and Sudanese irrigation engineers. All the nine riparian States have held meetings to discuss hydrometeorological surveys of the Nile, and discussed among other things the possibility of establishing a Nine States Nile Basin Com
mittee with wider mandates and possibilities.
This is only a beginning. But it is an example of how the nine riparian States have come to realize the importance of their community, of their interdependence and the inevitability of more and closer co-operation in the administration of the great River Nile which unites them as well as in other economic fields.
This oneness of history,cultural background and present day interests has led the Sudanese and Egyptian Governments to lay down together the institutional foundations for a more thorough and better-organized "complementarity" or Takamul, centrally planned and implemented.
This was started by a decision of the two Houses of Parliament — the Sudanese and Egyptian Peoples' Assemblies — meeting together a few years ago. They decided that the Sudan and Egypt, already bed together by historical, ethnic and other bonds of fraternity, had so many continuing common interests which imposed upon both Governments the need for much closer organic co-operation and the need to plan ahead for their commonness of interests.
Thus the stage was set, politically and constitutionally, for the work of the technicians.
This is going ahead at various Committee levels.
It would thus appear that the creation of a Joint Egyptian-Sudanese Commission, en riparian States in research and the study or execution of other joint projects.
Since the signing of the 1959 agreement, the Joint Commission has had regular meetings in Cairo and Khartoum, and managed, through good will and vast experience, to achieve
couraged the formation of regional and subregional economic groupings in Africa, provided that they are built on practical and realistic common bases, as a first necessary step in the right direction, on the road to the establishment of an African common market by the year
2000.
History, geography, hydro-economics, as well as a unity of common destiny have brought
the peoples and States of the Nile Basin together. Not only do they stand to gain by the es
tablishment of a Nile Basin Commission for formalizing and maximizing their co-operation in the utilization of Nile waters, but this step may open a longer and wider road which will bring them even closer together, for their common interest. There is no end to the pos
sibilities which their co-operation in the political, economic, technical, and cultural fields may open up for their peoples.
Egypt is convinced that all the sister States in the Nile Basin share the same interests and convictions, and that they would want to move foreward in this spirit of the community of interests. As the Nile has brought together all the nine Nile States and their peoples in the past, it should now be able to weave them closer together. Future co-operation among the Nile beneficiaries will take place without any outside prodding or extraneous influences, but hopefully with the encouragement of EC A.
For those whom God and the Great Nile have brought together, let no man bring asun
der.
To sum up, Mr. Chairman, achieving self-reliance, sufficiency in food and energy, in
dustrialization and wide-enough markets to sustain viable industries with a capital accumula
tion capacity, cannot come haphazardly. It will come only through a studied and centralized policy of diversification of production and trade structures, particularly through sustained industrialization and the widening of internal consumer markets.
To bring about a viable African economic community by the year 2000 which is the Lagos Plan of Action goal and not the year 2500, Africa needs an integrated approach to development or a "New Deal" economic policy based on:
1. The re-organization of management and planning structures.
2. A centralized operational approach to economic co-operation geared especially not towards trade liberalization but rather towards joint production, joint distribution,
joint intra-African trade and foreign trade. year 2000, cannot be left to the fortuitous play of the heterogeneous or haphazard growth of regional or subregional groupings into an African common market. That common market should immediately become our primary objective so that a central planning and opera
tional body could play its required role of catalyst, co-ordinator and promoter of viable economic integration and of increased productivity and development in all fields.
In order to assume the leadership role of orienting, harmonizing and advancing healthy being Africa's technical secretariat in all forums such as North-South negotiations. Ex
perience has shown that one of the major reasons for Africa's lamentable performance in the North-South negotiations is that African delegations have gone there divided and tech
nically wholly and woefully unprepared.
The new international economic order end result will also depend on how well African countries can define and structure their priorities. An African economic community secretariat can provide the needed guidance and solidarity. There cannot be a new interna
tional economic order before we have created a new African economic order.
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