The Time... has Come
This Extraordinary Assembly Session on Employment and Poverty Alleviation in Africa is a clear demonstration of our Union's commitment to job creation, to labor welfare and to poverty alleviation on our continent. It also reflects our collective perspective on the challenges we face, and our determination to prevail. That is why we intend not only to adopt a declaration of commitment and a plan of action, but also to put in place a follow-up mechanism for implementation, monitoring and evaluation of our commitments to combat unemployment and poverty in Africa.
In so doing, we reaffirm our duty to do much more on our own to fight poverty and deprivation on our continent. But this is only part of the solution. In an increasingly integrated world, much of what we construe as solutions to our problems are affected – positively or negatively-by what happens outside our continent. Hence, the need to look at the social dimension of globalization, especially as Africa has largely remained on the margins of the benefits of globalization, with nearly half of its population living below the poverty line. Poverty in Africa has actually worsened over the last 20 years, rising by an average of 2 per cent annually in the 1990s, and by 81 million people in absolute numbers. Part of the explanation for this worrying trend lies in the unfairness of the present process of globalization. The time to resolutely address this unfairness has come.
Excerpts from a statement by His Excellency Benjamin William MKAPA, in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) on 8th September, 2004
Vocabulary
1) A follow-up mechanism: un méchanisme de suivi.
2) To construe: to explain (the meaning of acts).
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