Distr.: GENERAL
E/ECA/CM.37/CRP1 15 May 2004
UNITED NATIONS
ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COUNCIL Original: ENGLISH
ECONOMIC COMMISSION FOR AFRICA ECONOMIC COMMISSION FOR AFRICA
Twenty-third meeting of the Committee of Experts Thirty-seventh session of the Commission/Conference of the Conference of African Ministers of Finance, of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Planning and Economic Development Economic Development
Kampala, Uganda Kampala, Uganda
18-20 May 2004 21-22 May 2004
COMPENDIUM OF MAJOR ECA PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
SINCE 2000
Development of ECA’s Work Programme
Established in 1958, ECA is one of five regional commissions1 under the administrative direction of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations General Assembly. As the regional arm of the UN general secretariat in Africa, ECA is mandated by the General Assembly to support the economic and social development of its 53 member States and to seek international support to address major concerns. It reports to ECOSOC through the Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development.
The work programme of ECA is developed within the governance structure as a UN regional commission. The secretariat, under the direct guidance of the various technical bodies set up by the Commission, prepares a draft programme of work. The draft programme is then submitted to the Conference of Ministers through its technical committee of experts. Upon approval by the Ministers, the programme is submitted to ECOSOC, the Committee on Programme Coordination, the budget committee and eventually to the UN General Assembly.
Once approved by the General Assembly, the secretariat is then directed to implement it with the allocated budget.
Implementation Modalities
ECA has articulated its general mandate around three main objectives: to support the economic and social development of its member States through activities, foster regional integration, and to promote international cooperation for Africa’s development. In this context, its activities are focused on the following six programmatic areas:
• Facilitating social and economic policy analysis;
• Enhancing food security and sustainable development;
• Strengthening development management;
• Promoting the advancement of women;
• Harnessing information for development;
• Promoting trade and regional cooperation.
In order to reach its objectives, the Commission uses several modalities to implement its overall work programme across the areas highlighted above. These include:
Research, Policy Analysis and Advocacy
Policy-relevant analytical research is central to the overall work of ECA. Drawing on its findings, the Commission serves as a policy advocate on critical development issues, to encourage the initiatives and reforms necessary for economic and social advancement in Africa.
Advocacy is focused on internal as well as external constituencies. Within Africa, it involves promotion of sound policies and dissemination of best practices in economic and social development. An important part of ECA’s advocacy work is fostering regional cooperation and
1 The other Commissions and years of establishment are: the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE, 1947); the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP, 1947); the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC, 1948); and the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA, 1973).
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integration, by helping member States strengthen intra-regional linkages and helping establish and strengthen sub-regional organizations and institutions.
In order to deliver these services, ECA systematically draws upon the work of other sources of exper tise, as contributors to its analytical work: peer reviewers of work in progress, hubs for dissemination of completed work, and agents for policy advocacy. National and regional African research institutions, researchers, and development professionals are notable examples of this outreach.
Building Partnerships and Consensus
ECA plays a critical role in helping build consensus around key African development challenges and in articulating common African perspectives and positions, which then form the basis for engagement with the international community. Its mandate and ability to convene senior policymakers and other development stakeholders is pivotal in fulfilling this goal.
While ECA is uniquely qualified to serve Africa in certain areas, it is fully aware that it lacks the capacity to address the full range of development challenges on its own. As such, partnership based on comparative advantage and pooling of resources has always been recognized as vital to maximize impact on African development.
Technical Assistance for Capacity Building
To help design and implement policies and programmes aimed at meeting clearly defined development goals, ECA also provides technical assistance and policy advice to African countries and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs). The assistance is delivered through a variety of tools, including on-demand regional advisory services, training workshops and seminars, and fellowship and internship programmes involving visiting scholars and researchers.
In order to provide this assistance, and in addition to its core analytical staff, the Commission draws on a pool of specialized regional advisers.
These three modalities are inter-related. The research and analysis allow ECA to advocate for effective policies. The analysis and building consensus identify best practices which in turn enables the provision of high quality advisory services. In addition, the experience gained with advisory services often helps ECA identify emerging issues requiring cutting-edge analysis. Inf ormed and advised by its members, ECA moves from vision on an issue, to strategy, implementation and feedback.
The Commission maintains overall regional and sub-regional perspectives within which activities of other UN organizations take place at the country level. Notwithstanding its regional and sub-regional mandate, ECA also responds to requests from member States and their intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) for technical assistance. This assistance, which remains relatively limited given ECA’s overall focus, takes the form of advisory services in various fields of relevance to the development of the member States in which ECA has demonstrated a comparative advantage.
For example, ECA has played, over the last few years, a key role in the area of information and communication technologies as well as in issues related to gender. Through the organization’s African Information Society Initiative (AISI), ECA is committed to helping
member States develop National Information and Communication Infrastructure (NICI) plans, largely because the ECA has played such a key role in mapping out ways to bridge the digital divide. In addition, ECA’s African Centre for Gender and Development (ACGD) is mandated to support member States promoting gender equality by strengthening their capacities for mainstreaming a gender perspective into national policies and programmes in line with commitments contained in various regional and global initiatives. Even where ECA is asked to work at the national level, its primary goal is to draw lessons for policy analysis at the regional level.
The annexes attached to this note present the major products and services delivered by ECA since 2000. They are structured around the six programmatic areas described above.
Therefore, for each sub-programme, the table contains the following products and services: i) the research and policy reports; ii) books and study papers; iii) forums and major initiatives; iv) conferences and meetings; v) advisory services; vi) technical assistance services; and vii) workshops and training. For each product, the table provides a succinct description of the objective, focus and relevance to member States, the target beneficiaries as well as the dissemination media and the number of copies distributed. With respect to services, the table gives a brief description of the service provided, the beneficiaries, the duration of the service and an indication of the main achievements. Overall, these tables demonstrate the commitment of ECA to addressing the development agenda of African countries and the wide range of questions and issues studied and analyzed by the Commission.
Poverty reduction, the primary Millennium Development Goal (MDG), is of critical importance to African countries and is a core objective of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). In that context, ECA exercises its regional comparative advantage to engage countries on the key policy and institutional requirements for reducing poverty, drawing on country experiences and on available empirical evidence. In doing so, ECA aims to provide policy-makers with a clear picture of how the region is faring and recommendations on what needs to be done to improve the situation. Examples of this work are well represented in the attached tables.
Numerous reports and studies have been published on issues ranging from pro-poor growth strategies, tracking performance of African countries to recommendations on how to address the deterioration of external debt situation in the continent and measuring and monitoring progress on mainstreaming gender issues. Key conferences and meetings have been organized by ECA to address these problems and help African countries define a way forward on matters related to the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) process, development effectiveness, and policy coherence among others.
The capable state is the prerequisite for development. Good governance generates popular confidence in institutions and processes of government. In the face of the opportunities and challenges posed by the global economy, nations are moving to integrate their economies with those of their neighbours, to create larger and more competitive regional economic blocs, and to engage in international trade not just as individual states, but also as regional powers.
ECA has leveraged its regional comparative advantage to help improve Africa’s capacity in these essential areas. The priorities defined for regional integration and the empirical assessment undertaken in this domain by ECA, the background documents prepared for African trade negotiators and the forthcoming African Governance Report represent some of the key products featured in the attached tables.
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A common vision for Africa’s quest to bridge the digital divide is rooted in the Conference of Ministers’ charge to ECA in May 1995 to create an African Information Highway. Many activities and programmes have resulted from this initiative as can be observed from the tables on Harnessing Information for Development such as the creation of the African Information Society Initiative (AISI), development of national information and communication (NICI) plans and the establishment of the Information Technology Centre for Africa (ITCA).
In the area of fostering sustainable deve lopment, ECA has been one of the very few entities to promote the use of science and technology to address population, environment and agricultural development issues. Its work on the African Green Revolution is notable as are the numerous other initiatives related to sustainable use of water, energy, and mineral reflected in the tables.
The largest initiative undertaken by ECA to foster dialogue has been the creation of the African Development Forum (ADF) in 1999. The Forum is a key modality for establishing an African-driven development agenda that reflects consensus among major partners and which is linked to specific ECA programmes. Since its inception, ADF has registered significant impact and rapidly gained recognition as an effective forum for informed dialogue and consensus building on urgent development issues of relevance to Africa. ADF I, “The Challenge to Africa of Globalization and the Information Age” was instrumental in fostering the work of the Commission in the ICT domain. ADF II, “HIV/AIDS: The Greatest Leadership Challenge” took the fight against the pandemic to a new level. ADF III, “Defining Priorities for Regional Integration” contributed to the process of establishing and galvanizing the African Union (AU) while the forthcoming ADF IV “Governance for a Progressing Africa” will represent a key opportunity for African policy-makers to forge a consensus on strategies and priorities for good governance at the national, subregional and regional levels.
In 2001, ECA launched the African Learning Group on the PRSP (PRSP-LG). The objectives of the Learning Group are to identify best practices for replication in other African countries; flag capacity constraints and recommend actions to remedy these constraints; and propose actions to be taken by Africans and donors in order to tap the full potential of the PRSP process in transforming the partnership between African countries and their donor partners.
ECA has commissioned 24 country studies to informed deliberations during the annual meetings.
In addition, ECA has also initiated The Big Table, a forum to foster dialogue with external partners. ECA recognized that African and donor leaders needed opportunities to interact at a high level, but in a frank and informal manner. For that reason, ECA pr oposed to selected Ministers of Finance of Africa and to leading OECD donors that a setting be established to discuss informally the very challenging topic of development assistance and related policy involving Africa. Since 2000, the meeting has been organized every year with a unique format and agenda that are designed to allow for maximum interactive dialogue.
The Regional Economic Communities (RECs) are ECA’s main clients at the subregional level. The Commission and its Sub-Regional Offices (SROs) worked closely with the main RECs to harmonize membership, strengthen policy and build technical capacity to pursue regional integration objectives. ECA has also been engaged with the new AU Commission and the major RECs in developing a framework for cooperation in support of the regional integration process. Some examples of the work done by ECA in support of the RECs, such as self-financing mechanisms or trade policy harmonization among others, are highlighted in the tables on Promoting Trade and Regional Integration.
ECA has collaborated closely with African leaders in the development of NEPAD.
Currently, ECA is engaged in wide-ranging consultations with the African Peer Review (APR) Secretariat to define the Commission’s role in support of the APR Mechanism, a tool for peer learning and monitoring of commitments towards achieving good governance. The various tasks assigned by the Heads of State Implementation Committee of the NEPAD to the ECA, AU and African Development Bank (ADB) will serve as powerful channels to further enhance collaboration between the three regional institutions. In this sense, the work undertaken for the APRM, as outlined in various tables of the annexes attached to this note, identifies clearly efforts towards enhanced partnership. Moreover, the back-to-back arrangements in holding the annual meetings of the ADB Board and the ECA Conference of ministers bodes very well for even greater collaboration on policy work.
Newly strengthened partnerships have prioritized relations with intergovernmental organizations, the UN, African universities and research institutions, bilateral donors and civil society groups in Africa. The products and services delivered enable the Commission to continue to conduct rigorous research and policy analysis that is relevant and timely in addressing Africa’s development challenges.
