Building partnerships critical to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, senior UN official tells AFRASIA Business Council Forum

Port Louis, 31 March 2005 - Abdoulie Janneh, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the United Nations Development Programme's Regional Bureau for Africa, called today for greater inclusion of a wide range of North-South partnerships to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Africa.

In his address to the launch of the first ever AFRASIA Business Council (AABC), a flagship initiative set up by UNDP and the Government of Japan to help African and Asian companies further their interests in trade and investment, Janneh said UNDP has given a particular importance to Goal 8 of the MDGs.

"Public-private partnerships, country to country partnerships, private sector partnerships and inter-continental partnerships are necessary to spread knowledge, experience, investment and trade," he said. "The concept of development has more to do with reorganizing partnerships towards a more balanced, mutually beneficial and thus sustainable social relationship that fosters industry, production, social harmony and economic growth."

Janneh, who is leading the UNDP delegation here, asserted that UNDP, as the lead UN development agency, would work with development partners to step up resource mobilization in both African and Asian countries and increase their participation in the global economy through trade and capital flows. He emphasized that with strengthened commercial ties, imports and exports of a wide range of goods and services could be increased significantly between Africa and Asian countries.

"A case in point is the rapid expansion within a short period of time of exports of roasted coffee beans from Uganda to China, and opening up of cafes in Beijing where Ugandan coffee beverages are mainly sold," he said, adding "such partnerships could facilitate the transfer of technology, skills and direct foreign investment."

"The Asian experience demonstrates that it is possible to transform traditional, low tech small and medium enterprises into modern, high tech, efficient and export-oriented SMEs," said Premdut Koonjoo, Minister of Small Enterprises, Cooperatives, Handicraft and the Informal Sector of Mauritius. " Some of the most advanced or best performing Asian economies like Japan, Korea, India and China rely on vibrant SMEs for job creation, research and development, and high industrial output."

For two days, participants discussed a number of critical issues in creating business opportunities, including constraints that the newly-established mechanism must face to institute desperately needed improvements in business performance. Some entrepreneurs said inappropriate regulations and inadequate enforcement of contracts are hampering their efforts to establish partnerships, citing macroeconomic instability, policy uncertainty, taxes and corruption. Others explained the importance of domestic capital formation, stressing that a good climate not only raises private investment, it also provides a spur to productivity by inducing businesses to develop.

More importantly, they urged international institutions and donors to play an important role in the process of creating business opportunities between African and Asian countries. Their role could point to the enhancement of credibility that international agreements can bring.

"The launch of AABC will not solve all the problems hampering the promotion of trade and investment. Without effective institutions and good governance, there can be no political, social and economic stability, all of which are an essential prerequisite for economic development," said Ambassador Shinsuke Horiuchi, Special Assistant to the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Japan. "In the Asian experiences, the role of government was identified as crucial to attract foreign direct investment," he added.

The AFRASIA Business Council is part of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development initiative launched a decade ago by the Government of Japan to raise international cooperation for Africa's socio-economic growth and development. AABC will focus its action plan on providing specialized services in information management, business ventures and skills and knowledge development programmes. It operates a Web portal, The AFRASIA Exchange, which provides a virtual marketplace for investment and technology opportunities (http://www.afrasia.org).