What’s New: Regional workshops firm up priorities for Tokyo meeting

10 September 2003: Africa's regions are firming up their development priorities in time for the Third Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD III) to be held from 29 September to 1 October 2003. TICAD has become a major platform for African development since its inception with the first Tokyo conference in 1993.

A regional workshop for West and Central Africa in Yaounde, Cameroon, 23-24 June, consolidated preparations for the conference, which will review progress in reducing poverty and furthering Africa's integration into the global economy -- goals agreed on at TICAD II five years ago -- and will spur global partnerships for Africa's future development.

Two other regional workshops took place this year in May for southern Africa in Pretoria, South Africa, and in early June for eastern and northern Africa in Nairobi, Kenya.

Support for the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) is emerging as a main theme for Tokyo. That initiative by African leaders seeks to promote democratic governance, human rights, private enterprise, access to international markets for African exports and investment in Africa's key sectors. The conference's objectives also relate closely to the Millennium Development Goals, an agenda for reducing poverty and improving lives that world leaders agreed on at the Millennium Summit in September 2000.

Participants in the three workshops called on TICAD III to focus on consolidating peace and resolving conflict throughout the continent, improving governance -- including a fuller role for civil society -- and promoting agriculture, which they spotlighted as a leading engine of Africa's growth.

Other priorities they endorsed for the Tokyo conference included support for the private sector, improved national and regional infrastructure, strengthening human resources, mobilization against HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases, and upgrading water supplies. They also highlighted information and communications technology (ICT) as a field for productive cooperation between Asia and Africa.

Co-organizers of TICAD III include the Government of Japan, the Global Coalition for Africa, UNDP, the UN Office of the Special Advisor on Africa, and the World Bank.