Yaounde,18 january
Monsieur le Président de la République du Cameroun,
Monsieur le Président de la République française,
Excellences,
Mesdames et Messieurs,
C’est pour moi un grand plaisir de me retrouver au Cameroun, et un grand honneur de participer à nouveau à cette assemblée.
Permettez-moi tout d’abord d’exprimer ma gratitude au Président Biya et au Gouvernement camerounais, qui accueillent cette réunion.
Je tiens aussi à rendre hommage au Président Chirac, qui démontre par sa présence que la France reste fidèle à son engagement aux côté de l’Afrique dans sa recherche de la paix et de la prospérité.
Toutefois, comme chacun d’entre vous, ma joie d’être ici est tempérée par l’incertitude sur le sort du Président Laurent Désiré Kabila, dont nous nous souvenons tous de l’active participation au sommet Afrique-France tenu à Paris il y a deux ans.
Je voudrais, du haut de cette tribune, et au début de nos travaux dont la première partie est justement consacrée à la problématique des conflits, de la paix et de la sécurité en Afrique dans le contexte de la mondialisation, réaffirmer la détermination de l’ONU à contribuer au règlement pacifique du conflit en République démocratique du Congo. Je voudrais aussi lancer un appel pressant à toutes les parties au conflit pour qu’elles oeuvrent en ce sens. Enfin, je voudrais exprimer ma sympathie au peuple congolais en ces moments d’incertitude.
Mesdames et Messieurs, chers amis,
Voyons d’abord quelle image de l’Afrique nous aimerions que cette conférence transmettre au monde. Quel message souhaitons-nous envoyer à nos confrères et nos consœurs du Sud, et à nos partenaires du Nord: les Européens que représente le Président Chirac ici présent, les Russes, les Japonais, dont le Premier Ministre vient, pour la première fois, d’effectuer une tournée en Afrique, et les américains, dont le nouveau Président entrera en fonctions samedi?
Il ne suffit pas de faire simplement appel à la générosité, ou même au sens de la justice, des pays industrialisés. Il nous faut aussi leur faire comprendre qu’ils ont tout intérêt à nous aider.
Nous devons les convaincre que l’Afrique compte, et qu’au vu de la situation actuelle, ils doivent intensifier, et non pas réduire, leur politique d’engagement à notre égard.
Why does Africa matter. Because it contains over 700 million fellow human beings all of them would be consumers and because its crises cannot be contained within its borders.
The battle against Hiv/Aids cannot be won in the wider world if it is lost in Africa, where two thirds of all deaths from the disease have happened.
Nor can the world environment and climate be unaffected by the loss of African flora and fauna, of African forests, an indeed of fertile farmland being turned into desert.
Our present poverty makes us a source of problems for other continents, from crime and unwanted immigration to religious and political extremism. How much better it would be for everyone, when Africa would be full of productive, successful people, as those prosperity and ingenuity are sources of hope for the rest of the world!
We most convince our partners that that is not an impossible dream – that Africa is not a hopeless case, nor yet a passive victim, aspiring only to live on charity. We must show them that we africans are, in the words of the poem that helped sustain Nelson Mandela during his long imprisonment, “the captain of our soul and master of our fate”.
Happily, we do have evidence to offer. We can cite the recent peace agreement between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and the intensive efforts being made by African leaders and institutions to resolve other conflicts in different parts of our continent. Better still, we can cite efforts to deal with the causes of conflict – from the conflict prevention mechanism you have set up here in Central Africa to the courageous stand taken by the OUA against the seizure of power by unconstitutional means, which has contributed to so many African conflicts. We can cite the firm resolve that was in evidence last month at the Africa Development Forum in Addis Ababa, where African leaders showed that they are at last breaking the wall of silence about Hiv/Aids and taking charge of the response. And we can cite the growing courage and outspokenness of our citizens and journalists: their insistence on democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights.
Last month’s conference of new and restored democracies in Benin made the message very clear. And since then my own country, Ghana, his given us another fine example of the new African way of transferring power – peacefully, through the ballot box.
This spread of democracy is a very positive aspect of Africa’s response to the challenge of globalisation – the themeof this conference. By using new global media – the internet and cellular phones – election observers inform the world of result as soon as votes are counted in each district, forestalling any attempt at fraud by the authorities. And voters are emboldened by knowledge of what is happening in other African countries, or as far away as Yugoslavia.
In all these cases, Africans are showing a new will to look their problems squarely in the face, and a new capacity to take charge of them. But globalisation is above all an economic phenomenon, and in this crucial area Africans are in danger of missing out on it. The central challenge we face today is that of making globalisation work in Africa, instead of leaving Africans behind.
Last September, at the United Nations Millennium Summit, the leaders of the whole world resolved to halve the proportion of abjectly poor people in the world by 2015. History will judge this generation by what it did to redeem that pledge which, in Africa, implies a spectacular leap in the annual growth rate. It will judge Africain leaders, in particular, by wheter they enabled their peoples to board the train of the new global economy, and made sure that everyone had at least standing room, if not a comfortable seat.
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The countries that have achieved higher economic growth in the last 10 or 20 years are the ones that have successfully integrate into the global economy and attracted foreign investment, as well as mobilising the savings and resources of their own citizens. We must make sure that every African country has access to those opportunities.
That in turn depends largely on the quality of governance a country enjoys, and the level of education of its people. In both these areas the UN Development Programme, and other branches of the UN family, are helping African governments to improve the quality of service they provide to their citizens, and in so doing to improve the climate for investment. I urge you all to work with us to further these ends.
Our future also depends on technology, especially the new information technology. At present, Africa has fewer than one per cent of the world’s internet users. If we allow ourselves to be left on the margins of the new knowledge-based world economy, we shall fall ever further behind.
That need not happen. Unlike earlier technologies, this one does not require vast amount of hardware, or financial capital, or even energy. What it does require is brain-power the one commodity that is equally distributed among the world’s peoples. So for a relatively small investment-mainly an investment in basic education, for girls and boys alike we can bring all kinds of knowledge within reach of poor people, and enable poor countries to “leapfrog” some of the long and painful stages of development that others had to go through.
India is showing the way. Its software exports exceeded four billion US dollars last year, and are project to reach 50 billion by 2008. a much smaller country, Costa Rica, saw its growt rate surge to 8.3 % in 1999, the highest in Latin America, thanks to the development of its microchip industry, whose high-tech products find a ready market in other countries.
We need not look so far afield. Some African countries too are learning the lesson. Mauritius uses the internet to position its textile industry in the global market. Mali has established an internet to provide better administrative services. These is much, much more to be done. I have tried to help by launching “UNITES” the United Nations information technology service, a global consortium of high tech volunteer corps, to train people in developing countries in the uses and opportunities of information technology. It is already active in the 12 countries, seven of wich are in Africa.
But there is no easy fix for the institutional impediments which still block the new technology in too many African countries. Too often, state monopolies charge exorbitant prices for the use of band widths, thereby putting the new world economy beyong the reach of most of their citizens.
I urge you all to review your arrangements in this area, and make sure you are not denying your people the opportunities of the digital revolution. Yes, Excellencies, there is much that we africans can do to help ourselves. But we will still need help from others. More fortunate countries have a vital part to play.
At very least, we are entiled to expect them to practise the free market rhetoric they preach, by removing the barriers that keep african products out of their markets, and cutting back the subsidies to their farmers, which make it so hard for african farmers to compete.
By so doing they would give Africa, along with other developing regions, the chance to export its way to prosperity. But many, if not most countries in Africa will also need positive help before they can seize that chance.
Everyone now agrees, in principle, that the burden of debt must be lifted from the poorest countries and I’m glad to say that several african countries did benefit from accelerated debt relief in the last month of 2000, the jubilee year. But substantial new resources are still needed, if the agreed debt relief schemes are to take effect.
And many african countries, wheter indebted or not, need help to reach the stage where they can produce goods and services that the rest of the world wants to buy. They need infrastructure and technical assistance, not least in halting the spread of Hiv/Aids. Many also need help in resolving their conflicts and rebuilding a peaceful and productive society.
In all these task we look to the industrialised world for support. We need both official assistance and commercial investment. We need to find new ways of mobilising resources for development. That is the prupose of next May’s Conference on the Least Developed Countries, the first United Nations Conference ever to be hosted by the European Union. Unhappily, as we know, 34 out of the 48 lowest developed countries are here in Africa. It is therefore vital that Africa prepares thoroughly for this conference, and comes to it with constructive and carefully argued proposal.
Early next year there will be another important United Nations meeting on a closely related subject: “financing for development”. In preparation for it I have formed a high level panel, with former President Zedillo of Mexico in the chair, to recommend concrete, achievable steps to augment the flow of resources to the developing world. The panel includes two distinguished africans, my countrywoman Mary Chinery-Hesse, and Majid Osman from Mozambique, as well as most distinguished frenchman, Jacques Delors. I believe it can make a very significant contribution to our thinking, an helped build up political momentum. Most crucially, I hope it will help convince the industrialised world that development and african development in particular is not a lost cause.
That is the task that faces us, my fellow africans. We have to convince our partners in the industrialised world that we are people worth helping, because we are helping ourselves. We do no need to hide our shortcomings, or the grim reality of our problems. We do need to show that we are facing up to those problems and that we intend to beat them.
That is message that must go out today from Africa to Paris, to Washington, to Tokyo, to Moscow and to the entire world. Let it sound loud and clear!
Thank you very much.
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