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Date : 29/05/2006
Source: The Presidency
Title: Mlambo-Ngcuka: International Press Institute


  Speech delivered by Deputy President, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, at the International Press Institute, Edinburgh, Scotland

Wilfred Kiboro, the Chairman of the International Press Institute
Johann Fritz, Director International Press Institute
George Reid, honourable Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament
Honourable Ms Lindiwe Mabuza, South African High Commissioner
Ladies and gentlemen,

May I thank the International Press Institute (IPI) for this opportunity, to exchange ideas on a subject of importance not only to Africa but to the world.

Editors and their different media play a crucial role in ensuring success or failure in Africa?s quest to hold the world stage. There is of course enough competing news around these days to exert heavy centrifugal pressure away from Africa yet. I would still argue that we deserve and even demand attention for Africa.

First let me say that the faith the IPI showed in our democracy to be when, just before our 1994 transition, you went ahead and held a world congress in my country is not only appreciated but vindicated. Our magical combination of leadership and commitment ushered in a splendid democracy and it grows in strength and depth by the day. It has small and big challenges which test the resilience of our democratic institutions and are making them stronger.

The question ?do editors get it right or wrong on Africa?? was posed when I was invited to speak here. I must start by stating I respect the editors ?freedom of speech? and I recognise that editor?s are human beings sometimes they will get it wrong and sometimes they will get it right or even both. Editors have been making choices on how they see Africa. And they have tended to see the dark side of Africa.

Africa still has a disproportional share of damning news which sustains Afro pessimism. Hence, I would like us to talk about ?re-branding? Africa consistent with the strides made by individual countries and by the continent as a whole through New Partnership for Africa?s Development (NEPAD) and African Union (AU).

I would like us to dispose of the mindset of Africa in decay in favour of a new mindset, the one that is in line with the emerging reality. I am reminded of a headline of the economist a few years ago which said ?Africa the hopeless continent.? A rather sweeping statement which has haunted some of us.

This is not to deny that we have had and still have some very sad moments in different parts of the continents but the over generalisation has had the specific result of dishing out collective punishment to all in the continent and discouraging investment thus holding back progress.

Negative attitudes towards Africa are entrenched and therefore leading to self fulfilling prophecies. What I suggest to this informed gathering is that things have changed in Africa and are changing substantially and for the better, which calls for re-imaging Africa. I would like to speak to some of the Africa wide initiatives that illustrate how Africa is developing and overcoming its problems.

The Africa Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) through which African countries review one another on wide ranging subjects such as governance, peace and stability. Human rights, economic development etc. Ghana, Benin, Rwanda and South Africa are some of the countries that have acceded to the Peer Review Mechanism. South Africa?s is currently being peer reviewed. There is great societal dialogue ensuing from this process which can only serve to strengthen African democracies. It also highlights contradictions and synergies within our society. The results will be presented to a panel of heads of states that will engage their peer on the findings with an aim of assisting the country improve itself and for all of them to draw lessons.

NEPAD provides a mechanism for African countries to collaborate rather than compete against themselves. It is about pulling together resources to address common problems of development and share risks. Initiatives within NEPAD include:

* The comprehensive African agricultural development programme through which African countries are working towards targeting 10 percent of their budget to promote agriculture. The priority in that regard has been identified and regional centre of excellence are being developed such as the international livestock research institute in Kenya.

* In the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector progress has been made on the roll out of e?schools and the East Africa Submarine fibre optic cable system is taking shape.

* Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda Interconnection Project and Mozambique - Malawi Interconnection Project also progressing.

* The Western power corridor interconnection is on schedule for the Inga (three) hydropower project in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which will increase the much needed energy generation capacity for at least 10 Southern Africa countries.

* Challenges facing NEPAD include human resource shortage and capacity of regional economic communities. Substantive progress has been made however in preparing projects, 14 bankable infrastructure projects have been successfully considered by the Japanese government for funding.

On the political front the emergence of democracies in Africa and the number of Heads of State who have retired gracefully at the end of their terms are indicative of the deepening political maturity. In some countries where there were initiatives to extend terms of offices of Presidents there has been successful opposition by parliaments and broader society clearly, illustrates the vibrancy of our society and elected representatives. Notwithstanding that in some countries the opposition was not successful.

It is important to celebrate some of the former conflict ridden States that are now marching towards stability and progress such as the stunning success of once war torn Mozambique and recovering states such as Angola, the DRC, Burundi and Liberia.

Problems do remain in some countries such as Darfur in Sudan, Ivory Coast, these are exceptions rather than the norm but no doubt challenges. Out of 54 countries in Africa only five countries are in conflict in 2006. Yet the 49 countries are easily compromised by failure to acknowledge peace in most countries and note success of individual nations. The decline of numbers of African refugees and refugees in general as indicated by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) is very welcomed and proof of progress.

At Gleneagles, Scotland in 2005 the G-8 leaders of the world?s richest nations pledged to support Africa?s development. Their plan also called for international co-ordination of increased assistance to Africa to meet the millennium development Goals (MDG) and for debt relief. The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) debt relief aimed to ensure the additional resources will target the poor in the affected countries rightly so. Before this HIPC initiative eligible countries were on average spending slightly more on debt service than on health and education combined.

Under the recent debt relief International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank supported programs some of the countries have increased markedly their expenditures on health, education and other social services and on average such spending is now almost four times the amount of debt service payments. That has to be encouraged. The struggle for debt relief has only been partly won.

We have to take into account that pressing reconstruction needs may mean large new loans at the same time that old debt is being reduced especially for countries that have emerged from conflict.

Maintaining a sustainable debt position while seeking the additional financing needed to make progress towards the MDGs remains a serious challenge for countries, even after debt relief under the HIPC Initiative. None of these are easy problems. These are issues that we would hope IMF and World Bank continue to explore and that they are not lost in discussions that may take too long. Writing about these issues over and over again helps to sustain the pressure and keep the story alive.

Africa does face significant challenges which have been captured in the state of preparedness of most Africa countries to meet the MDGs.

This calls for a concerted and united effort by those that are weakest those that are stronger and the developed world to collaborate. Poverty reduction, water, energy, shelter, nutritional status and life expectancy are but some of the challenges Africa faces today. The demand imposed by HIV/AIDS and other chronic illnesses to the socio economic fabric has meant that some countries posed to do much better have an added burden on their resources both financial of the human.

Yet even with these challenges it would be wrong to conclude that Africa is a dying continent with no capacity to ever take off. The development status of Africa presents a challenge to the world as well as unique opportunities for development and sustained investment. These are opportunities for investing in green fields especially for infrastructure which are often obscured in the way Africa is reported about, the tendency is to be obsessive about risk assessments and not opportunity which influences how a country is then rated. Anecdotal evidence gets elevated to trends which feed into analysis and editorials that have far reaching economic impact.

I am still arguing that a very good story is emerging in Africa and it calls for different branding and more positive editorials. In the same way that we have seen a decline in conflict and more democratic institutions. Africa also has interesting economic indicators which prove that there is a forward push rather than decay.

Africa?s key generic performance indicators

Growth of many economies of the world in 2004/05 was constrained, however, developing economies showed much better outlook and performance. Africa benefited from a favourable commodity cycle benefits of peace and stability and macro economic reforms. The average Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth for Africa?s was 5.1 percent against world growth of about 4.5 percent average.

Africa?s average inflation remained below double digit in 2005 with inflationary pressure recorded in fewer countries.

Most Sub-Saharan countries have a good chance of achieving three to seven percent growth which a positive trend but not as enough. Oil exporting countries will do even much better. Oil producing countries also need to invest the oil revenue windfall much better. In addition to successful macro reforms and improved investment climates to many African countries. There is a need for continuous micro reforms to correct market failure and specific country challenges.

They are off course the external challenges amongst the major challenges are the high oil prices that work against Africa acts of God e.g. drought, the locust invasion which unfortunately robbed some of the West African countries of the benefits of the agricultural sector with good, overall performance in addition there is persisting market access barrier in rich countries and lack of progress in the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

In our case as South Africans we need to reduce inequalities. Hence, we have adopted our own Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA) in response to our South African specific socio economic challenges which include:

* Massive infrastructure investment by the state to address overstretched infrastructure that cannot cope with our levels of growth which averaged 4.5 percent of GDP in 2005.

* A drive for skills development focusing on priority and scarce skills for South Africa needs.

* Sector development which targets high potential growth sectors where South Africa has a competitive edge such as tourism.

We also focus our attention to the ?second economy? which is those who live in the margins of society. We have a range of interventions targeting small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs). Youth and women are aiming for universal access to provision of social services by 2014.

AsgiSA is a calculated response to drive shared growth. We realise our growth need and can go much faster and impact on more people to reduce unemployment and poverty than it has done in this first decade of our democracy. South Africa?s growth has also come on the back of a commodity boom, South Africa being a mining economy and growing consumption and sustained business confidence.

Our target is to grow at six percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per annum minimally by 2010 so that by 2014 we are able to achieve even go beyond the MDGs in some areas.

The greatest and most fatal threat to some of these good plans is the shortage of human resources, the pouching of human resource by developed countries from a small pool of well trained people in our country especially educators and health workers is our biggest challenge.

I would like to reiterate what the President said recently in London, he called for the two nations to have a collaborative win-win approach when it comes to skills and dealing with skills mobility with rich countries such as United Kingdom (UK) must compensate poor countries for brain drain by investing in training more people in the developing countries and sharing the surplus. In that way we will also build the capacity of our training providers.

The story of brain drain in developing economies is a big story that needs to be told and solutions to be found. We also need to entice the many skilled Africans who are in the Diaspora which off course means we must incentives them. It would be na?ve to think we can control mobility of skilled personnel but a do nothing scenario is also untenable. We would urge a collaborative approach between the rich and poor countries.

I want to repeat; Africa is a good story even with all its challenges. A story that can be told much better using facts as against anecdotes, seeing the bigger picture and resisting a bad broad brush across the 54 nations. The African story is good but like any good drama it also has tragedies, sad and happy endings, humour and joy if you search for facts.

One of the greatest disappointments is the African media that tries too hard to imitate foreign media which often means sounding like their overseas counterparts when reporting about their own countries and missing opportunities to bring in local insights originality and depth.

The importance of accurate reporting cannot be over emphasised. I believe Africa has had its fair share of very bad and inaccurate over generalised criticism with many dire consequences. Time has come for re-branding the continent which also demands even greater performance by Africa nations themselves and reliable platforms for Africa to talk about itself and be heard.

I hope and believe this today is one such platform and I thank you for this opportunity. I hope you will resolve to keep the true African story alive.

I thank you!

Issued by: The Presidency
29 May 2006
   

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