Untitled Document

Maputo, Mozambique
July 10, 2003

Mr Chairman, your Excellency President Chissano,
Excellencies, Heads of State and Governments Excellency,
Mr Secretary-General,

Excellency, Mr Amara Essy, Interim Chairperson of the Commission of the African Union

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends,

It is a great honour to be able to address this distinguished Assembly of Africa on such an important topic at such a critical time.

As the UN Development Programme's new Human Development Report that we are formally launching here today makes clear, the world -and Africa -is at a decision point.

We have the global means, the know-how and the record of development success here in Africa as well as other regions to state categorically that if today Africa and the world make the commitment of will and resources then tomorrow -2015 --we can reach the Millennium Development Goals of halving poverty, removing hunger, putting every boy and girl in school and stemming the crisis in our health and environment.

The message of this report is that poverty is no longer inevitable yet we face a development crisis, with more than a billion people -one-third of them on this continent --languishing in absolute poverty, most of them without clean water to drink or enough food to eat, beset by diseases from HIV / AIDS to tuberculosis, lacking access to schools and healthcare, and living in an environment that by nearly every measure is rapidly degrading.

It does not have to be this way. While worldwide, at least 54 countries got poorer in the 1990s-largely because location, economic structure, and other unaddressed handicaps kept them from overcoming their development challenges -at the same time, literally hundreds of millions were lifted out of poverty in other countries. Africa, however, the report warns is in real danger of being left behind.

Nearly one in every six African children die before age five -unchanged from a decade ago. Overall primary emollment is still below 60%, and on other indicators too the news is grim. On current trends the goal of halving poverty will not be met until 2147.

But those trends can be changed. For example, several African countries -including Mauritius, Tanzania, the Seychelles, and our hosts, Mozambique -have achieved sustained GDP growth rates close to the 7-8% needed to meet the poverty targets.

Swaziland and Malawi both increased school enrolment by over 20% in the past decade; Senegal and Uganda have shown the way to stemming the spread of HIV/ADS; Mali improved access to potable water by 12%; Chad improved access to sanitation by 11 %; Egypt, the Gambia, Cape Verde and Tunisia reduced child mortality by one-third or more.

So how do we make these success stories not the exception but the rule; how to enable Africa and other parts of the developing world to join in the circle of prosperity?

With this report, UNDP seeks to help answer that question. It argues that recent formulas of good governance and open markets are necessary- but not enough.

For most on our watch list of almost 60 "priority countries" –of which, again, nearly half are in Africa --lack of progress is not about lack of trying to put good institutions, policies and growth in place. It is about supplementing those necessary steps by

addressing deeper structural handicaps such as geographic isolation, undiversified commodity-dependent economies, impractically small, unjoined markets, conflict, exclusion of women al)d a deterioration of Africa' s top soils that is undermining the agricultural base.

This agenda is clearly reflected in the pioneering New Partnership for African Development, NEPAD -which UNDP has been strongly supporting in areas from communications to the African Peer Review Mechanism --as is the acknowledgment that the primary responsibility for making this happen clearly lies with the developing countries themselves.

And, it is reflected tangibly by the kind of commitment to policy reform and prioritizing social needs that is embodied by our host, President Chissano and his government, who as the steady, sustained improvement in its Human Development Index over the past decade shows, are transforming what was not too long ago one of the poorest countries in the world into a dynamic model for Africa and the wider world

This approach is now spreading across Africa. And here it is the MDGs good fortune to be underpinned by a phenomenon where Africa has become a leader, with more and more countries holding credible democratic elections. It is these enfranchised millions who are the key stakeholders in these ,Goals with the power to hold governments to account for their MDG perfonnance. In this way we can rebuild the political debate and the accountability of leaders around development success.

But there is a second side to the MDG compact.

At the Millennium Summit, at Monterrey and again at the Johannesburg World Summit for Sustainable Development last year, donor countries committed to grow their public investment in and other support to developing countries when developing countries did their part.

Because the kind of structural barriers this report describes are in many cases too entrenched to be tackled by developing countries alone. As Africa discovered during the 1990s, when development assistance plummeted by a third, trade barriers remained high and debt relief elusive, achieving the MDGs without this side of the deal is like competing with one hand tied behind your back.

Some donor countries are doing their part. Ireland, whose prime minister on Tuesday hosted the first announcement of this report with the participation of President Chissano, has blazed a trail by growing its foreign aid at over 30% a year and pledging future increases on a similar scale all with a clear focus on the neediest countries, especially in Africa. It is one of three donors, along with Belgium and France, which have committed to specific dates by which to join Denmark, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden who have already met the internationally agreed Development Assistance target of 0.7 per cent of GNP .

But while new donor commitments -which should, if- and it is a big "if'- pledges are honoured, reach $16bn by 2006, nearly half of which should come to Africa - it is way short of the $50bn additional aid that is the minimum needed to meet the MDGs.

And the need is more than aid. Making the MDGs a reality also requires we make rapid progress on trade and debt relief, helping break down barriers that keep developing countries out of rich markets and allow them to devote more of their own scarce resources to development priorities rather than repaying international creditors.

There is still not a successful solution for debts born of collusion with yesterday's dictators in countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia or Nigeria. Nor can there be economic justice in cosseting each European cow with a subsidy two and a half times the income of half your people; what purpose if what is given in aid is taken away in trade barriers? Big Cotton in the United States secures for itself subsidies three times the amount that the US provides in assistance to Africa. Protected cotton markets in the US and EU cost small farmers in Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Togo an estimated $250 million a year.

Look at our shared task as a roadmap to be followed in the coming months and years if we are to meet the goal: a Doha Round to be made a genuine development round; a funding meeting, such as the one next week to replenish The Global Fund for HIV/Aids; malaria and TB, brought to success; NEP AD plans for infrastructure and market

integration funded and implemented; the national progress in governance, economic management, health and education provision, gender inclusion, agricultural sector investment and private sector development accelerated. And we need progress

throughout, both in developing countries and in the donor partners, benchmarked and tracked through national and global MDG reporting.

For this Millennium Development Compact is our collective responsibility -and within our collective power --to achieve. It can unite us all, rich and poor, North and South, developed and developing not in rhetoric, but at an extremely practical level, where we can hold each other to account for shared goals and, together, change Africa and the world.

Thank you