The most powerful force for reducing poverty is economic growth, combined with strong participation from the poor. Gamal Nkrumah reports from an African development conference that was recently held in Alexandria "Africa is the only continent in the world where, in the past two decades, income per capita has been in decline," reads the consultation document produced by the Commission for Africa, a London-based body established in the spring of 2004 to "generate ideas and actions for a strong and prosperous Africa". The thought-provoking document was presented at the North Africa Consultation Conference 14-16 recently held at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. "The ideas and proposals described were discussed by commissioners at their last meeting in Addis Ababa in October 2004." The document was "designed to help focus on priorities and test the relevance and realism of ideas" pertaining to African development. The Commission for Africa -- composed of 17 commissioners, nine of whom are African -- is scheduled to produce a report in Spring 2005. Africa is a continent with unique characteristics -- the continent's fast shifting demography creates specific economic and social problems shaped by a wide range of historical and cultural variables. Participants at the Alexandria conference discussed at length some of the pertinent issues impacting the continent. A set of challenges has traditionally constrained development in Africa. Half of the continent's people, for example, are now under the age of 15 -- a feature of African social composition that has tremendous ramifications on its development concerns. Participants concluded that the needs of African youth must be addressed as a matter of particular urgency. As an initiative of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose country is to host the G8 summit in 2005, the Commission for Africa is designed to spotlight world attention on the challenges of African development. "Among the conundrums with which the commission is wrestling, is that of how to arrive at solutions which are sufficiently radical to make a real difference to the people of Africa, but which are not so radical that they are deemed politically undeliverable by donor nations," the document stresses. Western powers often tend to view aid as a device for rewarding good behaviour by poor and underdeveloped countries, which in turn are put under tremendous pressure to secure democracy and promote economic development. "I think we had a great collection of people from five countries -- professionals, academics, interest groups, women, the disabled, the youth and a cross-section of people from all walks of life," Simon Mills, cultural director of the Commission for Africa, told Al-Ahram Weekly. Mills, seconded from the British Council, worked extensively in eastern and central Africa. This is his second visit to Egypt, and his first to Alexandria. He paid special tribute to the different groups that "pulled this event together" -- the Bibliotheca Alexandrina working together with the Secretariat of the Commission for Africa. "The 17 commissioners work in a personal capacity," Mills notes. "These are politically active people." They include dignitaries as diverse as Tanzanian President Benjamin Mpaka and former head of the International Monetary Fund Michel Camdessus. Participants agreed that Africa's economic growth and social development is best fostered by the state, the private sector and civil society working hand in hand. "Sustainable growth will be driven by the private sector, but it is the state which, in large measure, determines the environment in which the private sector operates, and the ability of poor people to participate," the commission document declared. "From the point of view of the commission's consultations programme, we run these highly ambitious and very successful programmes. On average 600 people attend these events, which could be described as civil society consultations," Mills explained. In the past three months, Mills visited Senegal, Cameroon and Kenya lobbying support for the commission and gauging public opinion on development concerns in the different parts of the continent. "Consultations is always an imperfect process. We're now at the end of our consultations process, and I think we had a great collection of people engaging in serious discussions about Africa's future. We've made an effort to embrace Francophone Africa, including the Maghreb countries of North Africa," he said. Be that as it may, the outlook for Africa is far from rosy. "At a time when the rest of the world -- including the rest of the developing word -- has experienced rapid economic growth, most of the people of Africa have been left behind, with nearly half of the continent's people living on less than $1 a day," the Commission for Africa document warned. However, there are subtle signs of a stirring in many parts of the world's poorest and least developed continent. "Fifteen countries in Africa showed average growth rates faster than four per cent per annum during the 1990s. Many of these countries, for example Uganda and Mozambique, have seen income poverty fall over an extended period," the document pointed out. "Without a sustained push, starting very soon, the chances are remote that the internationally agreed targets for halving world poverty by 2015 -- [one of the so-called] Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) -- will be met." One of the Alexandria conference's aims was to "check out what people from the North African region feel," Mills said. Participants at the Alexandria conference acknowledged that North Africa does not constitute an economic area. North African countries "adopt different policy systems and are highly differentiated in terms of size, resources and levels of development. They also differ in their trade patterns and economic relations with other regions of the world," explained economist Essam Montasser. "The windfall revenue emanating from the oil price rise towards the end of the first half of the 1970s not only set in motion an unprecedented boom in the Arab Gulf oil- rich exporting countries but also served as an Arab region- wide engine of growth. It likewise acted as a vehicle of regional cooperation in the form of factor movement with labour surplus countries, mainly from the North African region, exporting labour to the sparsely populated labour-shortage Gulf countries. At the same time, a reverse capital movement took place, from the capital-surplus Gulf to the North African capital- starved region in the form of aid, investment and remittances," Montasser said. "While this spillover effect led to periodic accelerated growth, rising income and consumption levels, it did not contribute to building the necessary foundations for sustained growth. On the contrary, it may have deflated any building up of momentum for true reform." Other participants concurred. "Poverty is an enemy of good governance. Although a country does not have to be rich in order to be democratic, a minimum amount of resources is needed in order to meet some minimum requirements of good governance," said Mona Makram Ebeid secretary-general of Al-Ghad Party. Ebeid's assessment of the commission's initiative was cautiously optimistic. "If the commission is really to produce outcomes that lead to a more sustainable path for Africa, it must make decisions that lead to improving the lives of African citizens, and slow down the destruction of the continent's natural resources," she said.
