The United Nations is launching what it claims is an unprecedented, 25-billion-dollar effort to improve Africa’s basic education, health care, governance, and water and food security.

U.N. officials Friday said the world body’s Special Initiative on Africa involves several U.N. agencies and affiliates, including the World Bank.

It is also the first time that a U.N. initiative has been based on a broad consultative process with African governments.

“This is, for us, a very serious test of our commitment to African countries,” says Stephen Lewis, deputy executive director of the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The United Nations intends to focus more international attention and resources on several specific development goals recommended by African governments themselves. As a result, official development assistance (ODA), as a whole, will become concentrated more on those targets.

The specific, U.N.-supported programmes include a 10-year campaign to provide basic education to all African children; the reduction of the most common and preventable diseases, including malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis; and reforms in land ownership and access to credit to poor people, especially women.

Other components of the initiative seek to involve non- governmental organisations more in African governance, and to strengthen regional peace-building ventures.

U.N. officials stress that, unlike previous, unfulfilled plans for Africa, this initiative comes with explicit costs and sc

The United Nations is launching what it claims is an unprecedented, 25-billion-dollar effort to improve Africa’s basic education, health care, governance, and water and food security.

U.N. officials Friday said the world body’s Special Initiative on Africa involves several U.N. agencies and affiliates, including the World Bank.

It is also the first time that a U.N. initiative has been based on a broad consultative process with African governments.

“This is, for us, a very serious test of our commitment to African countries,” says Stephen Lewis, deputy executive director of the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The United Nations intends to focus more international attention and resources on several specific development goals recommended by African governments themselves. As a result, official development assistance (ODA), as a whole, will become concentrated more on those targets.

The specific, U.N.-supported programmes include a 10-year campaign to provide basic education to all African children; the reduction of the most common and preventable diseases, including malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis; and reforms in landit to poor people, especially women.

Other components of the initiative seek to involve non- governmental organisations more in African governance, and to strengthen regional peace-building ventures.

U.N. officials stress that, unlike previous, unfulfilled plans for Africa, this initiative comes with explicit costs and stated commitments to meet them.

Lewis says that commitment alone separates the current initiative from the “amorphous, general nature” of such previous U.N. projects as the New Agenda for the Development of Africa (NADAF).

To awtain the initiative’s goals, argues Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, director of the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) regional bureau for Africa, African governments will need to use only a small fraction of the ODA they now receive.

“The initiative calls for 25 billion dollars over a 10-year period,” she says. “That’s just 20 percent of the current level of (Africa’s) ODA.”

As part of the money-raising effort, the World Bank for the first time has committed itself to mobilise more than 85 percent of the 25 billion dollars which the United Nations is seeking for the initiative’s 10-year span.

But U.N. officials may be hard put to obtain even that much money for the initiative’s goals because of the sharp, and ongoing, decline in aid to Africa among industrialised nations.

Sirleaf admits that declining ODA levels, and the threat by the U.S. Congress to cut back the World Bank’s “soft loan” branch, the International Development Association (IDA), could compromise the World Bank’s commitment, thereby endangering funding for the Africa initiative.

“We know that ODA is at a decline,” she says. “We know that competition for resources is intense.” But, at the same time, she contends, Africa should be able to meet the U.N. goals within their existing ODA levels.

As a result, she says, what many African states need to do is simply re-allocate aid money from defence spending and other goals and spend them on those proposed in the initiative — proposals which African governments themselves have recommended.

Moreover, Sirleaf adds, the United Nations expects lenders may provide additional funds for some new aspects of the U.N. plan, including regional peace efforts.

But there are other storm clouds overshadowing the new set of goals for Africa. The debt burden for the entire country is now some 313 billion dollars — far more than the U.N. initiative seeks to garner.

The World Bank, for instance, estimates that some 24 African countries will face an “unsustainable” debt burden well into the next century.

To help alleviate this challenge, a component of the new initiative is to encourage multilateral and bilateral lenders to reduce some of Africa’s debt.

Sirleaf does admit, however, that the United Nations must find ways to accomplish that goal while satisfying the most prosperous lenders, which are still unlikely to forgive substantial amounts of debt.

Moreover, the new initiative still remains vague as to which country will obtain what amount of funds, and crete ways by which the money will be spent are still up for negotiation, says Lewis.

The continued lack of detail has led some Africans — pessimistic after too many years of growing poverty — to ask for results soon.

“This is just more talk,” says one African diplomat, who declined to be named. “The debt is growing, and without any serious plan to reverse that, this new effort will achieve nothing.”

The United Nations is launching what it claims is an unprecedented, 25-billion-dollar effort to improve Africa’s basic education, health care, governance, and water and food security.

U.N. officials Friday said the world body’s Special Initiative on Africa involves several U.N. agencies and affiliates, including the World Bank.

It is also the first time that a U.N. initiative has been based on a broad consultative process with African governments.

“This is, for us, a very serious test of our commitment to African countries,” says Stephen Lewis, deputy executive director of the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The United Nations intends to focus more international attention and resources on several specific development goals recommended by African governments themselves. As a result, official development assistance (ODA), as a whole, will become concentrated more on those targets.

The specific, U.N.-supported programmes include a 10-year campaign to provide basic education to all African children; the reduction of the most common and preventable diseases, including malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis; and reforms in land ownership and access to credit to poor people, especially women.

Other components of the initiative seek to involve non- governmental organisations more in African governance, and to strengthen regional peace-building ventures.

U.N. officials stress that, unlike previous, unfulfilled plans for Africa, this initiative comes with explicit costs and stated commitments to meet them.

Lewis says that commitment alone separates the current initiative from the “amorphous, general nature” of such previous U.N. projects as the New Agenda for the Development of Africa (NADAF).

To awtain the initiative’s goals, argues Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, director of the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) regional bureau for Africa, African governments will need to use only a small fraction of the ODA they now receive.

“The initiative calls for 25 billion dollars over a 10-year period,” she says. “That’s just 20 percent of the current level of (Africa’s) ODA.”

As part of the money-raising effort, the World Bank for the first time has committed itself to mobilise more than 85 percent of the 25 billion dollars which the United Nations is seeking for the initiative’s 10-year span.

But U.N. officials may be hard put to obtain even that much money for the initiative’s goals because of the sharp, and ongoing, decline in aid to Africa among industrialised nations.

Sirleaf admits that declining ODA levels, and the threat by the U.S. Congress to cut back the World Bank’s “soft loan” branch, the International Development Association (IDA), could compromise the World Bank’s commitment, thereby endangering funding for the Africa initiative.

“We know that ODA is at a decline,” she says. “We know that competition for resources is intense.” But, at the same time, she contends, Africa should be able to meet the U.N. goals within their existing ODA levels.

As a result, she says, what many African states need to do is simply re-allocate aid money from defence spending and other goals and spend them on those proposed in the initiative — proposals which African governments themselves have recommended.

Moreover, Sirleaf adds, the United Nations expects lenders may provide additional funds for some new aspects of the U.N. plan, including regional peace efforts.

But there are other storm clouds overshadowing the new set of goals for Africa. The debt burden for the entire country is now some 313 billion dollars — far more than the U.N. initiative seeks to garner.

The World Bank, for instance, estimates that some 24 African countries will face an “unsustainable” debt burden well into the next century.

To help alleviate this challenge, a component of the new initiative is to encourage multilateral and bilateral lenders to reduce some of Africa’s debt.

Sirleaf does admit, however, that the United Nations must find ways to accomplish that goal while satisfying the most prosperous lenders, which are still unlikely to forgive substantial amounts of debt.

Moreover, the new initiative still remains vague as to which country will obtain what amount of funds, and for which specific goals. Concrete ways by which the money will be spent are still up for negotiation, says Lewis.

The continued lack of detail has led some Africans — pessimistic after too many years of growing poverty — to ask for results soon.

“This is just more talk,” says one African diplomat, who declined to be named. “The debt is growing, and without any serious plan to reverse that, this new effort will achieve nothing.”