African Leaders and Experts Warn That Reform of Global Governance Will Fail If Poorest Countries Are Sidelined

Geneva - The Africa Progress Panel has today launched a new publication ahead of the G20 Summit in London next week, bringing together the views of eleven African leaders and development experts. They conclude that a new and improved form of multilateralism is needed to allow the developing world to overcome the challenges created by the economic crisis, warning that reform will not be effective or sustainable if the world’s poorest countries are not included in reformed governance structures.

The eleven contributors include Kofi Annan (Chair of the Africa Progress Panel), Michel Camdessus (former Managing Director, IMF), Goodall Gondwe (Minister of Finance, Malawi), Gilbert Houngbo (Prime Minister, Togo), Trevor Manuel (Minister of Finance, South Africa), Simon Maxwell (Director, Overseas Development Institute), Festus Mogae (former President of Botswana), Linah Mohohlo (Governor, Bank of Botswana), Todd Moss (Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development), Benno Ndulu (Governor, Central Bank of Tanzania) and Ngaire Woods (Director of the Global Economic Governance Programme, University of Oxford).

The contributors make a number of key policy recommendations, including:

- The Bretton Woods Institutions must be reformed at several levels to make them more inclusive. While the World Bank’s allocation of a third seat on its Executive Board to Sub-Saharan Africa is a first step in the right direction, others like it must follow to ensure a more equitable and fair distribution of voting power.

- Backroom deals should give way to transparency and full representation, whether in the Bretton Woods or other financial institutions such as the Financial Stability Forum and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.

- In the short term, if the G20 is to become the premier forum for coordinating a global response, then the African Union should be systematically represented. In the longer term, multilateralism must be underpinned by institutions with universal reach such as the UN whose legitimacy is beyond question.

- This crisis will not be overcome by institutional reform alone. Donors must renew their commitment to boost resource levels for the least developed countries, ease access to credit, review debt sustainability criteria and lessen aid conditionality.

Mr Annan, Chair of the Africa Progress Panel, states in the report that:

“Africa now needs urgent support to maintain economic activity and protect the vulnerable from the crisis. But while trillions of dollars are being found, at short notice, for stimulus plans and bail outs in the richer countries, the least developed countries find themselves lacking access to credit and faced with lending policies and practices that minimise their chances of receiving loans”.

“Lacking the means to argue their case at the top tables in the global economic and financial architecture, Africa’s countries are left to face the very real danger of malignant decoupling, derailment and abandonment”.