Recovery linked to participation.

• Position: Popular participation in economic recovery in Africa

In a message to the Conference on Popular Participation in the Process of ReCOVery and Development in Africa 12-16 February, Arusha, United Republic of Tanzania), Secretary-General javier Perez de Cuellar pointed to the inescapable link between recovery and popular participation. He affirmed that development could only be sustained if its priorities were defined by the people and involved risks and sacrifices they could accept.

The UN Programme of Action for African Economic Recovery and Development, 1986-1990, he said, remained an important framework for co-operation between Africa and the international community.

In the short and medium term, the Secretary-GeneraI stated, Africa would continue to require the support of the international community. "The continent needs to enter the 1990s with a clean slate, economically speaking, if it is to grasp the opportunities offered by the profound changes of the 1980s", he declared. In order to expeditiously diversify its national economies, larger markets needed to be created, additional resources needed to be invested in social and economic infrastructure, "and the page needs to be turned on its external indebtedness".

In the long run, however, the shape and content of Africa's recovery and development in the rest of this century and beyond must be determined by Africa itself and by "the vibrant cultures of its peoples".

The Conference, organized jointly by the UN Economic Commission for Africa and nongovernmental organizations, identified the lack of participatory processes as the primary cause of Africa's unyielding, decade-long economic catastrophe. It called upon African peoples and Governments to urgently embark on a series of far-reaching changes in the structures, patterns and...