African ministers tackle economic challenges of 1990s.

Ministers at the twenty-sixth session of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the seventeenth meeting of the Conference of Ministers 9 May-13 May, Addis Ababa) agreed that the UN Programme of Action for African Economic Recovery and Development, 1986-1990, had little positive impact on the continent's economic performance over that five-year period. For the twelfth year in a row, they noted, the standard of living of the average African had fallen.

Participants proposed that the international community support a form of debt cancellation. Africa did not need more programmes; rather, current programmes should be properly implemented, they stressed.

ECA Executive Secretary Adebayo Adedeji urged the Commission, the Organization of African Unity and the African Development Bank to continue to assist African Governments in meeting the challenges ahead.

The Ministers reviewed possible actions to meet the economic challenges facing Africa in the 1990s and considered how to reverse the socio-economic decline afflicting the continent Over the last decade. They proposed a new international agenda for cooperation" to provide Africa with the resources it needs for economic reform.

Other issues addressed included the relationship of the 1980 Lagos Plan of Action and the African Alternative Framework to Structural Adjustment Programmes to economic recovery efforts and regional cooperation.

The Conference also agreed that African countries suffering from the economic repercussion of the Gulf crisis should benefit from the global compensation fund to be established for...