Africa calls for firm commitments for the development of its least developed countries

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Africa calls for Firm Commitments for the Development of its Least Developed Countries.

Addis Ababa, 19 March 2010 (ECA) – The Africa Regional Preparatory Meeting for the Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC IV), concluded with calls for much stronger support to LDCs to ensure that more countries will graduate from this category at the end of the next programme of action.

The meeting was organized by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in collaboration with the Office of the High Representative for LDCs; and took place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 8-9 March. It was attended by ministers and representatives from the 34 African LDCs, international organizations, development partners and civil society organizations.

The conference undertook a comprehensive appraisal of the implementation of the Brussels Programme of Action for LDCs (BPoA), which comes to an end this year. Participants identified progress made, challenges ahead and lessons learnt.

Speaking during the review, Emmanuel Nnadozie, director of ECA’s Economic Development and NEPAD Division, said the litmus test for the next programme of action will be how many countries manage to graduate from the LDC category. “We should not keep meeting to review failure to achieve targets,” he said. It was therefore important to assign clear roles and responsibilities to improve performance and accountability.

The meeting observed that African LDCs have made considerable efforts in implementing their commitments. Wide ranging economic reforms have been undertaken, including macroeconomic, public sector reform, privatization and trade and financial liberalization. Indeed economic growth was above the targeted 7 per cent for several African LDCs for the period 2004-2008 prior to the negative effects of the global financial and economic crisis.

Governance and economic reforms had also succeeded in increasing government revenues from 17.3 per cent of GDP in 2000 to 24.8 per cent in 2008. Similarly, savings ratios increased from 12.5 per cent of GDP in 2000 to 17 per cent of GDP in 2006.

There was also considerable progress towards gender equality and universal primary education, and some progress towards health indicators with more availability of insecticide treated nets and antiretroviral treatments. Many countries made progress towards improving institutions of governance, but overall, adherence to constitutionalism and the rule of law remains a major challenge as does corruption and public service delivery.

Hunger remains pervasive in many African LDCs and the problem has worsened due to the food, fuel and financial crises.

This problem reflects a lack of sufficient focus on the agricultural sector in national public policies. The sector is massively under-capitalized with irrigation technology hardly in existence.

African LDCs and their development partners should therefore launch an African Green Revolution within to substantially increase agricultural yields and reduce hunger. The role of the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is welcome and should be further supported by other development partners as well as international agricultural research centers. There is also need to support infrastructure development in agriculture such as irrigation schemes and storage and processing facilities

Climate change was identified as presenting a big challenge for agriculture in particular and development in general.

Participants called on development partners to support the least developed countries to adapt to climate change by providing adequate, predictable, sustainable financial resources aimed at reducing vulnerability to enable them to strengthen their resilience to climate change as called for in the Copenhagen Accord. The potential of South-South cooperation in facilitating technology catch-up should also be exploited.

The meeting emphasized the importance of building strong productive capacities in African LDCs. For this to happen, huge investments are needed to upgrade public infrastructure and for developing human resources and skills of the labour force.

This is the type of investments that can alleviate bottle necks in the supply chain, lower the cost of doing business and provide incentives for crowding-in private sector investment.

External financial resources, including official development assistance, foreign direct investment and debt relief are important elements. ODA flows to African LDCs increased to USD 23.5 billion in 2007 from USD 9.2 billion in 2000. The share of LDCs in total aid to developing countries increased from 18.4 per cent in 2000 to 22.4 per cent in 2007. However, ODA flows to LDCs remain below the 0.15-0.20 ODA/GNI target set by the Third United Nations Conference on LDCs. More ODA should also be directed towards building productive capacities.

The Addis Ababa accord that emerged from this meeting will be taken for further discussion by the Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development in Malawi at the end of March. It will then form the basis of the African submission to the LDC IV conference in Istanbul next year.

Issued by the ECA Information and Communication Service P.O. Box 3001

Addis Ababa Ethiopia

Tel: 251 11 5445098 Fax: +251 11 5510365 E-mail: ecainfo@uneca.org Web: www.uneca.org

4/3/2014 Article - Africa calls for Firm Commitments for the Development of its Least Developed Countries.

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