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afrol.com/AENS, 23 February - East Africa has been challenged to strengthen its partnership with powerful Asian economies by learning to jump-start ailing economies by prioritising social development. Japanese ambassador to Kenya, Morihisa Aoki, said at a two-day conference in Nairobi this week that Africa could learn from Asia’s 30-year experience of high economic growth, which was a result of technical co-operation. Pointing out that Africa was one of very few regions where per capita incomes have fallen over the last 20 years, Aoki said forward looking nations could reverse this within very short spaces of time by aggressively establishing technical co-operation with better off nations. - Developing countries can learn from the success and failures of other countries that have gone through similar experiences, he said. Aoki warned that in 1980 the gross national product (GNP) per capita for the whole of Africa was US$ 770, but that this had dropped to just US$ 480 by 1998. And, he added, with a population growth rate of 2.8 percent per year, the number of people living in poverty is increasing. The conference - sponsored by the United Nations Centre for Regional Development (UNCRD) and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) - attempted to allow participants to exchange innovative ideas and foster partnerships between Asian and African countries based on a South-South model of co-operation. The theme was: 'Inter and Intra Regional Cooperation to Promote Effective Social Development Policy and Practice: A Forum for The Exchange of Asia-Africa Experience’. Dr Asfaw Kumssa, coordinator of the UNCRD’s Africa office said Asia’s successful regional co-operation strategies were responsible for its rapid economic growth and reduction of poverty levels. He said the driving force behind the strategy was market-oriented growth policies and effective institutions. Isaac Chivove, Resident Representative of United Nation Development Programme (UNDP) in Kenya, said information technology, or IT, was a powerful vehicle for developing countries to forge new partnerships with Asia and other partners. IT eliminated distance and time and allowed poor and isolated communities to get access to critical information from health to education that was once inaccessible, he explained. The UNDP is currently setting up a trust fund that will allow it to work with the International Communications Union (ITU) and other partners to support and monitor 'e-readiness' at a country level and then work towards getting developing countries better wired. Kenya's minister of home affairs, heritage and sports, Noah Katana Ngala, said African countries could also learn the concepts of micro-finance and credit schemes from Asia. Micro-lending and credit schemes have received increased attention as an effective means of empowering the poor in Africa. A document released during the conference notes that innovate social policies in Asia that can be replicated in Africa are government commitment to development, public and private sector partnerships, government regulation of the market and enforcement of socio-economic laws and transparent public policy. By Stephen Mbogo, African Eye News Service (AENS)
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