Economic drought strangles African recovery: Assembly calls for increased aid, debt relief.

• Position: UN General Assembly - Includes interview with Stephen Lewis, Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations

Economic drought strangles African recovery

Assembly calls for increased aid, debt relief

Despite courageous internal reform by African Governments since 1986, spiralling debt, cuts in foreign aid and the crash of commodity prices threaten to exacerbate the ongoing African economic crisis, devastating millions of people across the continent.

"The economic crisis now facing Africa can exact a toll every bit as deadly as the drought (of 1983-1985)," Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar reported to the forty-second General Assembly in October 1987. The situation has deteriorated, he said, since the Assembly adopted the United Nations Programme of Action for African Economic Recovery and Development, 1986-1990, at a special session of the General Assembly in May 1986.

His report examines conditions in Africa one year after the adoption of the Programme, under which African Governments agreed to adjust internal policies, and the international community pledged to increase aid and improve terms of trade.

African reforms have resulted in substantial gains in agriculture and manufacturing, but these were undermined by developments in the international economic environment, the Secretary-General reported. And far-reaching structural adjustment is provoking social strife in Africa.

"The strength and candor of the Secretary-General's report is very admirable -- it makes clear that Africa is going downhill and it's not Africa's fault," said Stephen Lewis, Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations and the Secretary-General's Special Political Adviser on Africa.

Underlining the urgent importance of increasing official development assistance (ODA) to Africa, the General Assembly on 8 December called on the international community to increase monetary aid and nonconcessional loans, stabilize commodity prices, extend more humanitarian aid, and enact debt-relief measures, including writing off some loans.

Anticipated aid has not materialized

In resolution 42/163 the world body also appealed for lasting solutions to deal with problems in the commodity market, so that more predictable conditions could be achieved in commodity trade: diversification in the processing, marketing, distribution and transportation of commodities, improving market access to commodities and promoting diversification programmes in the context of growth-oriented structural adjustment. Finally, the Assembly established an Ad Hoc Committee of the Whole of the Assembly to prepare the review and appraisal of the Programme of Action, which will meet for 10 days in September 1988 prior to the Assembly's forth-third session.

"In adopting the Programme, the international community signified the acceptance and recognition that Africa's own efforts required...