AFRICA-DEVELOPMENT: U.N. Initiatives Get Mixed Reviews

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 20 1996 (IPS) - African experts are judging the United Nations harshly for its efforts to support development in Africa, after the results thus far of three major U.N. initiatives over the past decade.

One of those initiatives, the New Agenda for the Development of Africa in the 1990s (NADAF), garnered many positive reviews this week as nations met here to examine progress mid-way through its 10-year span. But some diplomats and non-governmental experts worry that NADAF, and U.N. efforts in general, have done little so far to aid African economies.

“Is the United Nations really relevant?” asks Opa Kapijimpanga of the African Forum on Debt and Development, a Zimbabwe-based non-governmental organisation (NGO).

“We know the United Nations is being marginalised” in the debate over Africa’s debt and economies, Kapijimpanga says. “But it’s a waste of resources if these institutions are here just to gloss over issues.”

Because of U.N. ineffectiveness on Africa and governments’ inability to do more than plead for debt relief and development aid, he argues, “Africa is being put in a begging role.”

Mid-way through NADAF’s term, few here believe the world body has met any of its targets for advancing Africa’s social and economic conditions.

“Unfortunately, Africa’s economic recovery still appears tentative, uncertain, and limited in terms of the number of countries and sectors positively affected,” Indian Ambassador Prakash Shah says.

Shah praises U.N. data indicating that the number of African countries with negative economic growth fell last year to just three, while a dozen countries boasted gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates in excess of six percent. “But the results are still meagre when seen in the context of sustained declines since the early 1980s,” he adds.

One of the main problems, some activists contend, is that the United Nations is unable to speak firmly on behalf of the need for greater debt relief for Africa. The need to service external debt currently costs about one-fifth of all of Africa’s savings.

“We’re a little disappointed so far about the response on debt relief,” says Mark Foss of Partnership Africa Canada, a Canadian NGO.

Many African nations, he notes, had hoped the ad hoc review of NADAF could offer an opportunity to urge the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Paris Club to convene a special meeting on debt relief with African governments.

Kapijimpanga says that the general sentiment at the United Nations is that it is not the right place to send a strong message about how debt relief should be pursued. But he argues, “Unless the United Nations functions in such a way that it has leverage on these issues, then we will have a failure in global governance.”

“The message we’re getting here is that the North is already doing enough on debt relief,” Foss adds.

One proponent of that view is Victor Marrero, a U.S. ambassador who told the NADAF review this week that “the United States has already provided extensive debt relief for Africa’s poorest countries.” Washington has forgiven more than 1.1 billion dollars in African debt over the past three years, and has worked with the World Bank and IMF to devise ways of reducing multilateral debt, he said.

But more needs to be done, U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali says. Boutros-Ghali, in his evaluation of NADAF, recommends that commercial banks should be encouraged to accept deeper discounts in programmes to buy back debt, while the Paris Club should improve its terms for reducing bilateral debt.

Yet the United Nations has not really been able to participate in the debate on debt relief, while the IMF, World Bank and Paris Club have been unwilling to offer easier debt relief terms, Kapijimpanga says.

Meanwhile, neither NADAF nor the U.N. System-Wide Special Initiative on Africa, launched this March, give any clear indication of how to pursue Africa’s development, Foss argues. “It seems a bit of a muddle,” he says.

The Special Initiative came up for criticism this year among many governments which complained about insufficient coordination with NADAF. Both efforts involve mobilising resources for Africa’s social and economic development and target many of the same sectors, such as health, education and infrastructure.

The key difference, U.N. officials say, is that the Special Initiative will be NADAF’s “operational arm,” and will involve World Bank assistance to help reallocate some 25 billion dollars over the next decade for African development projects.

But some U.N. ambassadors still wonder how the two will fit together. “It is important that, rather than attempt to come up with parallel programmes, or a different and competing agenda, the initiative should devise detailed modalities and means for implementing NADAF,” says Vijay Makhan, assistant secretary- general of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU).

Otherwise, Makhan warns, the alternative could be “a stream of endless meetings and workshops that consume the valuable time of everybody concerned.”

Shah also doubts whether the new initiative, which seeks to keep its promises of more money for African projects by redirecting existing funds, will be effective. “Conventional wisdom dictates that it would have a more significant impact if it was based on additionality of financial resources, rather than mere reallocation,” he says.

But there is little will among the major donor governments to find new money for Africa, and Boutros-Ghali has warned that development assitance has actually fallen slightly in recent years.

“Africa’s debt crisis is no longer a technical issue,” Kapijimpanga notes. “It is a question of political will.”