Africa: 'the Renaissance has come.'.

• Position: Includes related articles - Sec. General Kofi Annan's report on Security Council

"The time is long past when anyone could claim ignorance about what was happening in Africa, or what was needed to achieve progress. The time is also past when the responsibility for producing change could be shifted on to other shoulders. It is a responsibility that we must all face. The United Nations stands ready to play its part. So must the world. So must Africa."

- Conclusion to Secretary-General Kofi Annan's report entitled: The causes of conflict and the promotion of durable peace and sustainable development in Africa.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan has asked Africa and the international community to summon the political will to give a new momentum to peace and development in the continent. He called on Africans to rely upon political rather than military responses to its problems, and urged the international community to show the will to intervene where it can have an impact, and invest where resources are needed.

The call came as the Secretary-General introduced to the Security Council on 16 April his report on the causes of conflict in Africa and the ways in which durable and sustainable peace could be promoted in the region. The Council had requested the report at a ministerial meeting it convened on 25 September 1997 to consider the need for concerted international effort to promote peace and security in Africa.

The report, which Secretary-General Kofi Annan described as "a clear and candid analysis of the sources of Africa's conflicts and why they persist", was an attempt to do justice to the reality of those conflicts and provide answers, by proposing "realistic and achievable" measures which, over time, might reduce, if not entirely end, Africa's conflicts. It also aimed to summon the political will of Africans and non-Africans alike to act when action was so evidently needed - the will without which no level of assistance and no degree of hope could make the difference between war and peace in Africa.

The Secretary-General noted that a number of African States had made good progress in recent years, while others continued to struggle. Poor economic performance and inequitable development had resulted in a near-permanent economic crisis for some States, exacerbating internal tensions and greatly diminishing governments' capacity to respond to those tensions. Good governance, he stressed, was now more than ever the condition for the success of both peace and development.

Above all else, the Secretary-General stressed that "it is the persistence of poverty that is impeding the full promise of peace for all of Africa's people".

These recent successes have sparked renewed international interest in Africa and, as such, the report has the potential to secure wide African and international support at a time when, the Secretary-General observed, efforts to break with past patterns "are at last beginning to succeed".

In the report, the Secretary-General asserts that Africa today must more than ever look at itself, given the renewed momentum in the continent's quest for peace and greater prosperity. However, he added, African efforts need stronger international support politically, as well as in the economic area, where greater debt relief and market access for more diversified African exports are crucial to ensuring the higher living standards that promote stability.

Welcoming the report, the President of the Security Council, Hisashi Owada of Japan, speaking on behalf of Council members, said they were "impressed by the commitment and insight" the Secretary-General had brought to the report. "We especially appreciate your incisive observations and carefully structured recommendations", he said.

Mr. Owada noted that the recommendations were also concrete and comprehensive and provided the Council...