This
Week in Review by Ousmane Aly
DIALLO is part of Wikiprogress Governance Focus
Hi everyone
and welcome to this Governance-themed Week in Review. Highlights include the 2013 World Economic Forum on Africa, a
blog review by Oxfam UK’s Duncan Green of Matt Andrews’s book on institutional
reform in Development, the London Conference on the reconstruction of Somalia
and two reports on how to increase Africa’s competitiveness and improve the
well-being of its citizens.
- The New Prosperity: Strategies for Improving Well-Being in Subsaharan Africa by the Boston Consulting Group (in partnership with Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative) assesses the well-being of Sub-Saharan Africa's countries. Of the top thirty countries globally that have made the greatest improvements in well-being over the last five years, eight are from sub-Saharan Africa. The continent’s best performers married stable economic environments with good governance.
- The Final Communiqué of the London Somalia Conference addressed the necessity for the international community to accompany Somalia on its path towards institution-building, peace and stability. More than 300 million have pledged to involve themselves in reconstruction of the country.
- The World Economic Forum on Africa took place from May 8th to May 10th in Cape Town, South Africa. With the aim of “delivering Africa’s promise”, the forum tried to devise ways of sustaining and sharing Africa’s steady economic growth as well as how to create jobs for the youth. During this event, the Africa Competitiveness Report 2013 was released. The report promoted innovative private-public partnerships anchored to potential growth poles to maintain the self-sustaining industrialization of the continent and the creation of jobs, among other recommendations.
- Also, during the last day of this forum, the Africa Progress Panel released its annual report on progress in Africa. The report calls for more transparency and accountability in the continent’s mineral resources sector. Since the mineral industry is a major driver of economic growth and its revenues have not improved the health, nutrition and education of the local communities who live on top of the rich, mineral filled soil, the report called for an improvement in governance and transparency in the management of these commodities, as well as more accountability to the (local) populations. Between 2010 and 2012, bad management cost the Democratic Republic of Congo, nearly 1.3bn (twice the annual health and education budgets) in revenues, in this sector.
- Among this week’s blog highlights, Duncan Green of Oxfam UK reviewed, The Limits of International Reform in Development, by Matt Andrews. The book provides a résumé of the reasons why governance and institutional reforms put forward by aid agencies have failed in the past. It also proposes ways to do better in the domains of governance and state-building.
- Last week, World Press Freedom Day was celebrated. This year’s theme was “Safe to Speak: Securing Freedom of Expression in All Media”. There’s a growing need to safeguard the security of journalists that works with new mediums such as the web. These statistics show that more needs to be done in this domain.
We hope to
see you next week for more governance-related
articles.
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