Wanetsha Mosinyi
16 January 2008
The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning Serwalo Tumelo has called on the UNDP to add its voice forcefully to the call for freer and fairer trade in Africa.
Tumelo also urged the agency to improve access to basic life savings and productivity enhancing technologies for poor countries and people. He was speaking at the official opening of the UNDP regional Bureau for Africa workshop on implementing its 2008-2011 Strategic Plan. He said the agency should build internal capacity to support trade facilitation and supply-side capacity enhancement in Africa.
"Globalisation, which gained new impetus with the advent of the 21st century information technology revolution, is a proven force for growth and wealth creation, but sadly, an inequitable one," he said.
"To-date, the benefits of globalisation have largely by-passed poor countries (including almost all of sub-Saharan Africa). Africa yearns for opportunities to gain a fair share of the benefits of globalisation."
Tumelo believes the global trade and intellectual property regimes also play a significant role in the marginalisation of Africa from the benefits of globalisation. "Africa is stuck in trade in low value added commodities, with tariff escalation in developed countries restricting value addition in developing countries." He also called on the UNDP to engage Africa more forcefully on governance, adding that reforms the continent needs are also about good policies, good legislative environments and functional institutions. The reforms are also about pro-development value systems that interlock to empower ordinary citizens and create opportunities for them to work their way towards better living. Some have argued that Africans should evolve and have their own concepts of governance. Others have even suggested that Africa could come up with its own economic approaches.
"There is no African way," Tumelo said. "Freedom is freedom, democracy is democracy, good governance is good governance, and economics is economics. In all instances, the core principles are universal. Our duty on governance is to learn from others and adapt solutions, not to dispute the relevance of universal principles." About the 2008-2011 Strategic Plan, Tumelo said it should recognise that the development challenge in Africa is also one of security, disaster-preparedness and disease. "There is no doubt that global terrorism will hurt Africa, especially in the area of tourism," he noted. "But Africa suffers even more from domestic conflicts and weak state capacity to deal with natural disasters, such as floods and droughts."
He said another emergency the continent is ill-equipped to face by itself is climate change, which threatens to disrupt livelihoods and increase vulnerability of floods, droughts and diseases.
Tumelo said as a UNDP programme country, Botswana's experience with the UN provides evidence of the urgency of reforming UN processes. "Our limited capacity is stretched thin by having to deal with several UN agencies, each with (its) programme. The one UN agenda per country would serve both the UN and programme countries as well."
Read comments. Write your own.
Copyright © 2008 Mmegi/The Reporter. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
Africa needs a ten=year plan of development. Here it is http://blackafricanamericansunited.blogspot.com
'Susu and Susunomics,' http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0-595-18246-1
"Susu Economics," http://www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/ItemDetail~bookid~3214.aspx