Economic Development in Africa Report 2010 - UNCTAD
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More on Africa-South cooperation:
- Asian FDI in Africa
Towards a new era of cooperation among developing countries
- Development of Africa Websection
Making South-South Cooperation Work for Africa / Policy Recommendations
---------Recommendations for African countries
* Mainstream South-South cooperation into national development strategies.
* African countries should adopt a well-defined strategy for South-South cooperation to ensure that it furthers rather than hinders the achievement of national and regional development goals. This means that South-South cooperation should be mainstreamed into national development strategies as well as efforts to promote regional cooperation within Africa.
* Take a proactive approach to the partnership process.
* A proactive approach by African governments and sharing of experiences with developing country partners will accelerate mutual policy learning, which should enhance the effectiveness of interactions for both parties.
* Ensure that cooperation with developing countries complements existing partnerships with developed countries.
* Developed countries have been and will continue to be important development partners for Africa. Consequently, it is important that the regions´ engagement with developing countries complements rather than substitutes for relations with traditional partners.
* Involve more local stakeholders in partnerships with the South.
* African governments should make efforts to get parliaments, the private sector and civil society more involved in the process, to ensure effective national ownership of the process and outcomes of the evolving partnerships.
* Strengthen efforts to develop productive capacities.
* African countries to achieve the average 7 per cent growth rate needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals, they have to promote public and private investment, structural transformation and the development of productive capacities.
* Play a more active role in coordination of support from partners.
* African countries to play a more active role in the coordination of support from developing and developed countries to reduce transaction costs and increase the development impact.
* Avoid accumulation of unsustainable debt.
* African countries to pay more attention to the structure as well as management of external debt to avoid a debt crisis.
* Adopt a developmental approach in seeking foreign direct investment.
The focus of African countries should be on creating linkages between FDI and the domestic economy and also directing it to sectors where it can catalyze domestic investment, create employment, spur regional integration and boost productive capacity.
---------Recommendations for developing country partners
* Broaden the scope of engagement to include sectors other than the extractive industries.
* Developing countries´ engagement in Africa is that their trade and, to a lesser extent, investment activities are heavily concentrated in the natural resource sector. Developing country partners to use their resource flow to enhance technology transfer and technological learning between African countries and other developing countries.
----------Strengthen support for regional integration in Africa.
It would be desirable for developing country partners to provide more support for regional projects as an important step towards developing regional markets and laying the foundation for a sustainable and mutually beneficial relationship with the region.
* Enlarge country coverage to facilitate South-South trade and ensure that the gains are more evenly distributed across countries.
* Developing country partners to explore ways and means to involve more countries, particularly the LDCs, in their partnerships with the region.
* Provide more information on development activities in the region.
* Developing country partners to increase transparency in their development cooperation with Africa as an important step towards improving accountability and establishing a sustainable relationship with the region.
------Ensure that projects have positive impact on the environment.
* Developing country partners to pay more attention to the environmental consequences of their activities in Africa.
* Address the transactions costs associated with the multiplicity of partnership initiatives.
* Developing country partners to coordinate and consolidate these initiatives to reduce participation costs for Africa for better development results.
------Recommendations for developed country partners
* Provide more support for Africa-South cooperation.
* Traditional development partners increasingly provide support for Africa-South cooperation by financing triangular cooperation activities. Africa´s traditional partners to resist any pressures that may arise to reduce financing for triangular cooperation projects in response to the global economic slowdown.
* Strengthen dialogue with Southern partners.
* Traditional partners to strengthen dialogue with developing country partners to enhance coordination and sharing of experiences and best practices.
-------Recommendations for regional and multilateral institutions
* Coordinate the development of statistics and collection of information on Africa-South cooperation.
* Provide more support to research on the impact and sustainability of developing countries´ activities in Africa.
* Establish financing facilities for Africa-South cooperation.
* Regional and multilateral finance institutions to make more resources available for support of South-South cooperation projects.
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