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Posted on 10-9-2004
Ouagadougou, 8 September 2004
Heads of state from about two dozen African states were to gather on
Wednesday to craft a jobs creation plan that would lift hundreds of
millions out of poverty and advance development on the world's poorest
continent.
Chaired by Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo, president of the African Union,
the two-day summit aims to find "remedies" for the epidemic of
unemployment and underemployment that has failed to provide paid work for
three-quarters of the population.
Investment in agriculture, the mainstay of most of Africa's economies --
and the rural subsistence farmers who make up 225-million of Africa's
300-million poorest people -- is among the key themes to be broached at
the summit.
So too is finding a better way to compensate the millions of urban poor,
and women in particular, in the sprawling slums of Africa's mega cities
such as Lagos, Kinshasa and Johannesburg engaged in informal employment.
Africa has made tiny steps towards economic growth, progressing from 3,2%
in 2002 to 4,2% in 2003, but those steps have not been complemented by an
expansion of gainful employment.
The problem is even more pressing when mindful of statistics that show the
continent's labour force expanding to 366-million people in 2015, with a
record half of those job-seekers in urban areas.
"[Economic] growth without employment means aggravating inequality;
instead of spreading wealth, it concentrates it," said Juan Somavia, head
of the International Labour Organisation.
"Job creation cannot be left to flow as a result of other economic
policies; it must be a targeted objective."
Programmes sponsored to the tune of billions of dollars by international
lenders have also failed to develop the necessary employment
infrastructure, said Somavia.
"The problem is that we are trying to manage the economy, and are
forgetting to create jobs," Somavia told reporters in the Burkina Faso
capital late on Tuesday as presidents from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Gabon,
Namibia and Senegal were arriving.
Heads of state from Burundi, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Benin, Mali and Tunisia
were also to attend.
"We have made mistakes. We concentrated on the financial details and not
on creating jobs, decent work and the investments that go along with
them."
More than 320-million people across the 34 countries in sub-Saharan Africa
live in extreme poverty -- surviving on less than a dollar a day without
consistent access to clean water, sanitation or health care.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the only place in the world where things are worse
now than 20 years ago, according to the United Nations Development
Programme, and is likely the only region to be unable to reach UN
millennium development goals that would halve poverty by 2015.
Poverty has outpaced population growth across the continent for the last
decade, expanding at 3,3% per year compared to 3,1% annual growth for the
continent as a whole, according to the International Fund for Agricultural
Development. - Sapa-AFP
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