Addis Ababa — Global recession may prove an obstacle standing on Africa's path towards attaining UN-set Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a senior UN official said on Wednesday.

The senior official said if Africa was to achieve the MDGs by the target year 2015, current growth rates needed to increase to over 7%.

But he said that was being threatened by the possibility of worldwide recession.

"If the strong growth in other developing countries is affected by troubling economic conditions in developed countries, this may adversely affect African Economies because a good part of this recent growth has come from commodity exports to emerging economies"Abdoulie Janneh, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of ECA said.

He was addressing a joint AU/ECA conference of Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development that was kicked off here at the UNCC.

He said growth in Africa has not generated the quantity and quality of jobs that would have helped to significantly reduce poverty.

.Africa has been growing steadily over the past five years. Growth performance in 2007 was 5.8% which is marginally better than the 5.7% achieved the previous year.

According to Janneh, twenty five countries achieved a growth rate of over 5% or more in 2007 while another fourteen grew at over 3%.

"This encouraging trend has been matched by improved governance and greater commitment to democracy and peace building," he said.

Developing economies were shouldering a burden from the relentless rise in prices of oil, food and commodities.

The situation was worsened by the diversion of food to produce biofuels in some countries where it was estimated nearly 20 percent of corn goes to making biofuels.

A UN report released in mid-2007 showed that sub-Saharan Africa was not on track to achieve any of the MDGs, which aim to reduce by half the number of people living in extreme poverty, to promote gender equality and to improve the provision of food, water, sanitation, health and education, all by the year 2015.

"Although there have been major gains in several areas and the goals remain achievable in most African nations, even the best governed countries on the continent have not been able to make sufficient progress in reducing extreme poverty in its many forms,: the UN report said.

As part of continued commitment to help enhance Africa's development, the UN General Assembly recently passed a resolution that designated a high-level meeting in September to take stock of the needs and challenges for the development of Africa.

The MDG Africa Steering Group was set up last September to coordinate and redouble international efforts to support the MDGs across the African continent, after data showed that despite faster growth and strengthened institutions, Africa remains off-track to meeting the goals.

Speaking about engagements of African countries in negotiating Economic Partnership Agreements with the European Union, Janneh said, the solution was to sign interim agreements, "given the constraints of uncompleted negotiations and a looming deadline." He said however that the interim agreements were just that and did not address a lot of outstanding issues.

In this regard, he put closer regional integration as Africa's overall objective.

"In taking this process forward, it must be borne in mind that Africa's overall objective is closer regional integration and any eventual outcome should promote this objective," Janneh pointed out."