Africans challenged to make globalisation work for them

Africans were challenged on Thursday to find ways to end their exclusion from the rewards of globalisation and make the system work for the benefit of the continent’s 820 million people.

The challenge was issued by international and regional leaders at the opening ceremony of the African Regional Dialogue of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalisation in Arusha, northern Tanzania.

"We cannot wish globalisation away. It is an inevitable part of the development process, and African countries must respond to its challenges to ensure they reap its benefits while minimising its risks," Kingsley Amaoko, executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, told delegates.

He said that for Africa to benefit from globalisation, action must be taken at the national, regional and global levels.

"On the national, the creation of a good investment climate - addressing the policy, institutional and regulatory environment - is key to growth, job creation and poverty reduction," he said

On the global level, he said, unfavourable terms of trade, tariff escalations, a lack of fresh ideas on how to tackle Africa's debt and, most importantly, agricultural subsidies in the developed world, would have to be dealt with if globalisation was to benefit the majority of Africans.

"We cannot move forward in integrating with the global economy unless we increase market access and trade within Africa. I want to see intra-African integration, first and foremost because it will improve our lives here. This is the promise of Nepad [New Partnership for Africa's Development]."

Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa, who is co-chairing the meeting with Finnish President Tarja Halonen, said: "I urge strongly for a much more proactive stance, for it is unhelpful to adopt the posture of a hapless and helpless victim of global conspiracy. We can determine a productive and positive course of action for which external support can rightly be demanded."

However, Halonen said the challenges were enormous as Africa was mainly excluded from globalisation, and when it was implicated, the experience was "mainly negative".

The director-general of the International Labour Organisation, Juan Somavia, and the interim chairman of the African Union, Amara Essy, both warned at the opening ceremony of the possible implications of ignoring the social dimensions of globalisation.

Somavia highlighted employment as the fault line for globalisation, saying, "From my perspective, the biggest failure of globalisation of the current model is that it is not producing the level of decent work the world needs." He described the lack of decent work as "the greatest security risk that the world faces".

Backing this view, Essy said unless more attention was paid to the social dimensions of globalisation, a social crisis would ensue, "throwing Africa into permanent insecurity and instability".

The World Commission was set up in February 2002 in an effort to move the debate around globalisation from "confrontation to dialogue", and it seeks a consensus on ways of ensuring that the benefits of globalisation reach more people. The commission is due to present a report "next autumn" that will contain recommendations on how to make globalisation more humane.