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Date
: 02/07/2004
Source: National Treasury
Title: T Manuel: Commission for Africa seminar
COMMISSION FOR AFRICA SEMINAR, WELCOMING REMARKS BY TREVOR MANUEL,
MINISTER OF FINANCE, Pretoria, 2 July 2004
Allow me also to welcome you to the National Treasury. Many of you
would probably know that the Commission for Africa was established
by Prime Minister Tony Blair earlier this year as a prelude to the
UK being in the rather unusual position of chairing both the G8 and
holding the Presidency of the European Union in 2005.
Moreover, some of you may also know that I serve on the Commission
as one of three Finance Ministers responsible for issues in
economic development.
But I am sure that many of you may also still be wondering what
exactly the Commission for Africa is all about, which is why we
meet here today. The purpose of this seminar is to share
information about the objectives of the Commission as well as to
provide you with an opportunity to give your perspective and ideas
on what the Commission should do. I am therefore confident that we
will leave this seminar a lot wiser than we arrived.
Let me start by saying something about my own expectations of the
Commission for Africa.
For the past four years, since the G8 meeting in Genoa, a number of
African Heads of States have been invited as special guests to
participate at the G8 Summits. This was done in recognition of the
pertinent development problems facing the Africa continent but also
in light of the unprecedented opportunity to make progress on
common goals of eradicating extreme poverty and achieving
sustainable development, following the UN Millennium Declaration,
the Monterrey Consensus on Financing for Development, the launch of
the Doha Development Round of multilateral trade negotiations, and
the Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development.
This culminated in 2002, at the G8 Summit in Kananaskis, Canada, in
the G8 endorsement of the Africa Action Plan, which commits the G8
to provide adequate resources so that no African country genuinely
committed to poverty reduction and good governance would be
restrained from achieving the Millennium Development Goals. More
concretely, they committed themselves to increase ODA flows by a
total of US$ 12 billion per year, of which half or more would be
allocated to African countries.
In these actions, the G8 has clearly shown their willingness to
partner with African countries, recognising Africa's desire to
further its own development. We have made great strides in NEPAD
and the African Union, based on a progressive Constitutive Act and
underpinned by institutions to ensure effectiveness and
accountability, such as the Pan-African Parliament and the African
Peer Review Mechanism.
This moment of interest, support and conscience should not be lost.
The Commission for Africa is an important initiative but it also
faces distinct challenges.
NEPAD has shifted the centre of decision-making about African
matters from North to South. Our responsibility is to strengthen
the locus of African decision-making. At the national level, the
importance for equitable growth, macroeconomic stability and
microeconomic policies that facilitate competitiveness and
sustainable wealth creation cannot be understated. Capable state
institutions are required for African states to balance the
distribution of economic burdens and opportunities.
Through the African Peer Review Mechanism, African countries have
embarked on an ambitious process to improve our institutional and
policy environment, accelerate poverty reduction and install good
governance, accountability and best practice on the Continent. The
Commission for Africa shall recognise these efforts as a major step
along the path to improved governance, and giving it the backing as
the standard-setting institution for African countries.
Moreover, the Commission for Africa shall put pressure on the G8 to
meet their commitments in the Africa Action Plan with respect to
more and better financing of development, opening markets to
products from developing countries, debt relief and promotion of
private sector investments in productive assets in Africa.
The argument in favour of trade distorting measures has long
expired. Moreover, the beggar-thy-neighbour economic policies of
the world's largest economies is elevating uncertainty in the
world, with negative spill-over effects on investment and growth
opportunities of developing countries.
The year 2005 presents us with a collective challenge to take
stock, reflect and substantially galvanise efforts towards the
Millennium Development Goals. It constitutes the first deadline for
meeting some of the MDGs and it is the targeted deadline for the
publication of a major UN study done by the UN Millennium Project
on the financing of the MDGs. Further discussion is necessary on
how we should proceed once developing countries achieve their MDGs.
Emphasis should be placed on stimulating the supply side of the
economy to achieve sustainable growth.
Despite an increasingly positive economic outlook in Africa,
substantially faster growth will be needed to reduce poverty and to
meet the Millennium Development Goals in Africa. Over the past
twenty-five years, our continent has grown poorer - not richer, and
only 4 countries are on track to meet the MDGs in 2015. On present
trends, Africa as a whole will only achieve the universal education
targets in 2029, halving poverty will require another 100 years,
and meeting the child mortality rates will only happen in
2169.
So the Commission for Africa is in my view a welcome addition to
the series of meetings and initiatives that centre on the challenge
of increasing the pace of development and poverty reduction in
Africa.
The Commission represents a critical opportunity to work with a key
development partner, and member of the G8, to make known Africa's
concerns about its own development tasks and to talk about the sort
of international economic environment that would be conducive to
achieving those tasks. The Commission has so far identified a range
of issues that need more discussion and definition, including the
role of multilateral and bilateral trade policies and impediments
to domestic and international resource mobilisation. Investment
policies, the constraints facing women in our economies,
infrastructure, and many others clearly need to be addressed by a
comprehensive work discussing Africa's challenges.
Nick Stern is here today from the Commission and UK Treasury in
large part to begin a process of discussion with us on these
issues.
And I trust that in the time we have for discussion you will raise
the concerns you have about the concrete development challenges we
face, your perspectives on what is needed to be done to overcome
them, and any views you would like to share regarding how the
Commission can best achieve its objectives.
Thank you
Issued by: National Treasury
2 July 2004
Source: National Treasury: (http://www.treasury.gov.za)
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