UN BOSS FOCUSES ON AFRICA

BAN KI-MOON FOCUSES ON AFRICA

The UN Secretary-General is finally turning his attention to the continent of Africa. This must be good news for the continent which has all along been consistently ignored and even directly manipulated by the rich countries of the world.

It is not lost to Africans that only recently, the G8 held a meeting to discus on the global Climate Change. Experts say that global warming can adversely affect the lives of human inhabitants of the world. Africa’s voice was conspicuously absent from at this conference. Of course no African country is a member of the G8. But, nobody doubts the fact that Africa will suffer more than any other continent from the effects of the global warming.

Ban Ki-moon subsequently appointed three envoys for Climate Change. These are Madame Gro Harlem Brundtland (the former Norwegian Prime Minister), Ricardo Lagos Escobar (former Chilean president) and Han Seung-soo (former president of the UN General Assembly). These are all high meriting and richly experienced leaders. But, none is an African!

Africa lacks the bargaining power among the international community. This is the reason why many discussions have been hel and global decisions on matters affecting the continent have been made without consultation and / or even representation of the continent.

It is with this in mind that Africans must welcome the gesture of Ban Ki-moon when he organized a meeting on September 14, 2007 for The World Bank, International Monetary Fund, African Union, African Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank and other UN agencies to address the issue of poverty in Africa.

The Ki-moon is concerned that Africa is lagging behind in global development goals and that not a single African country will meet the UN millennium development goals by 2015. What is worrying the UN boss more is the fact that Africa is the only continent where not one country is on track towards achieving these goals.

The UN boss led the group in resolving to mobilize all available resources to reduce the level of poverty in Africa by half by 2015.

The World Bank president, Robert Zoellick, said his institution will, from October this year, focus on the agricultural sector where some appreciable progress has been made across the continent.

According to the WB boss, right leadership, right programmes and righ support have been the missing links if the African development agenda. He cited Mozambique and Rwanda as exemplary countries that have displayed remarkable economic growth in Africa.

Even as these mega-financial institutions commit themselves to uplift Africa from its endemic poverty, the fundamental question of sustainability still remains. What impact will these institutions make on the lives of ordinary citizens off the continent? What will be the right programmes?

It is my take that these programmes must be such that the ordinary citizens of the continent will be ready to adopt and implement. They must be programmes that the citizens will be ready to identify will.

Maurice Sungu