Committee evaluates African recovery and sets 'New Agenda.' (United Nations Ad Hoc Committee of the Whole of the General Assembly).

A new plan for African recovery efforts was formulated by the Ad Hoc Committee of the Whole of the General Assembly, which met in the New York from 3 to 14 September to conduct the final review and appraisal of the five-year UN Programme of Action for African Economic Recovery and Development 1986-1990.

The United Nations New Agenda for the Development of Africa in the 1990s was adopted by consensus ad referendum and recommended for approval by the Assembly later this year.

The Committee also completed a 44-paragraph assessment of the implementation of the original Programme of Action. Acknowledging, along with other critics, that that Programme had been too optimistic, the Committee noted that targets for growth, food security, human investment and debt reduction had been missed, and declines rather than hoped-for-increases had been recorded by many States and for Africa as a whole.

Nevertheless, in the Committee's view, the Programme "was far from being a failure." It had focused the attention of African and other Governments on the basic economic, human and governance problems of Africa. "As a result, the economic decline afflicting Africa from 1981 to 1985 was slowed and, in many countries, halted."

During debate, it was apparent that representatives of African States and their development partners were often deeply divided over the assessment of the Programme's results and future measures to be taken.

In the New Agenda, remedies are prescribed for conditions in what the Committee predicted would become "the most afflited region in the world" by 1995 if present trends hold.

To avoid that and place the continent on a path to growth, the three-part plan recognizes the necessity for a new and stronger accord between Africa and the international community, and elaborates on what Africa and the developed countries commit themselves to do.

Innovative measures

In particular, the New Agenda calls for "innovative and bold measures" to tackle Africa's external debt, which exceeded $270 billion on 1990 and requires over 30 per cent of the continent's exports to service.

The Committee noted that donor countries had already cancelled or rescheduled some African debt, and an appeal was made to the international community to undertake further measures. These include the write-off private commercial debt, debt-equity swaps, debt buybacks, and debt for environment schemes. An international conference on Africa's external indebtedness was also proposed.

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