Globalisation meeting urges fairer implementation

Delegates attending a two-day meeting on globalisation, which ended in Tanzania on 7 February, has recommended that leaders take immediate steps to improve the way in which this world economic process is evolving.

Among the priorities for African leaders they listed were the need for greater regional economic integration, a greater focus on education, the improvement of their negotiating capacity at international trade forums, and a reduction in youth unemployment - a phenomenon they described as "a potential time bomb".

However, delegates said that in order for Africa to compete fairly, the international community would have to abandon its double standards.

"We continue to receive lectures from our friends about removing subsidies, while they continue subsidies themselves," Salim Ahmed Salim, the immediate former secretary-general of the Organisation of African Unity, said in delivering the recommendations of the meeting.

World and regional leaders attended the meeting in Arusha, northern Tanzania, on the African Regional Dialogue of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalisation.

Opening the conference, Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa said Africa needed "more stridently and more coherently" to argue its case for a fairer and more sustainable model of globalisation. Referring to the exploitation of Africa's cheap labour, available natural resources and traditional knowledge, he added that the lack of political will to articulate its position was a major reason for Africa's contribution to the world markets not being valued fairly.

Closing the meeting Mkapa, who is also the co-chairman of the World Commission on the Social Dimensions of Globalisation, summed up a mood of optimism that ran through the conference.

"Africa is not inherently destitute. It is not predestined to be so. Africa can rise if given a fair chance," he said.