Five priority areas highlighted in report on Africa crisis.

Five priority areas highlighted in report on Africa crisis

Five priority areas for national and international action are highlighted in a 53-page report of the Secretary-General on the critical economic situation in Africa (A/S-13/2) placed before the General Assembly's thirteenth special session.

The priority areas include: national and collective self-sufficiency in food production and agricultural development in general; efforts to meet drought and desertification; rehabilitation and development of transport and other structures; development of human resources and social services, with attention to the role of women and the need to protect vulnerable groups; and external financial resources and the problem of external debt.

The report states that droughts and famines suffered by many African countries from 1983 through 1985 attracted the world's attention to the plight of Africa. Emergency aid and good rains brought some relief, and although the food situation remains "precarious' and in some areas "quite serious', the immediate threat of mass starvation has subsided.

However, many countries of the cantinent "find themselves crippled by the inability to maintain even minimal levels of imports of the foreign inputs on which their economic structures depend'. Their financial situations have deteriorated sharply and suddenly in the 1980s, the report states, citing steeply rising debt service, depressed commodity prices and flagging flows of capital and credit as contributing to reduce foreign exchange supplies.

"The task is not merely one of rehabilitation and restoration of the conditions prevailing before the recent emergency', the report stresses. "Even then, it was clear that African development was not going well.' Food production per capita in sub-Saharan Africa has been declining since the early 1960s, and in the poorest countries gross domestic product (GDP) per capita fell throughout the 1970s.

"For the continent as a whole, the 1980s has been a period of sharp setback, but this has only accentuated an ominous trend of long-term decline. If this rend were to continue, new food crises must be expected to recur with increasing frequency and Africa would be caught in a vicious circle of underdevelopment.'

The report states that the economic situation is sufficiently critical to summon a special session of the General Assembly "not only because the present situation is one of acute distress but because the future development of the...