UN official calls for single African development work-plan to avoid waste of resources

A senior official of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) has called for a single African development framework to be established.

This, according to Ms Isatou Gaye, Chief of the Environment and Sustainable Development Section at UNECA, is to avoid the duplication and waste of the continent’s resources.

Ms Gaye was addressing a session of the sub-regional consultations on the Post-2015 Development Agenda in Mombassa Kenya, according to an October 2, 2012 ECA statement.

“Africa cannot afford parallel development agendas given the many capacity challenges it faces, including institutional”, Gaye said.

Ms Gaye questioned if two sets of development goals for Africa would be efficient, effective and practical.

Instead, she proposed that at country level, the Ministry in charge of Planning could do a good job of coordinating all development initiatives.

She prodded participants to look closely at the Rio+20 outcomes, particularly the sustainable development goals (SDGs) process whose establishment is imminent for possible integration into the post 2015 development agenda now under review across Africa.

Ms Gaye advised that sustainable development goals and the post 2015-development agenda should aim at avoiding duplication and seek to ensure complementarities.

By Ekow Quandzie