African countries have been urged to learn from positive transformation in rapidly developing nations in southern part of the world by investing in education, health, people, tackling gender issues and providing an enabling environment for sustained progress.
A public dialogue on “human development report 2013” entitled “The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World,” underscored this message in Cape Town, South Africa.
The dialogue was hosted by the United Nations (UN) Resident Co-ordinator and the UN Resident Representative in South Africa, Dr. Agostinho Zacarias. The programme was equally attended by diverse policy-makers and experts from within and outside Africa on the sideline of a two-day policy seminar on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) organised by Centre for Conflict Resolution (CCR) also in Cape Town.
The participants posited that Africa could improve its lot by looking inwards as well as learning from others’ experiences and investing in strategic areas.
Leading the dialogue, Zacarias explained that the report highlights that the world is changing and that the global South is no longer a region of under-developed or hopeless states as the nations situated in it were previously called.
The UN official, in an interview with The Guardian, said: “There are fundamental changes that countries in the South are undergoing in terms of economic and human development.
It is not about only Gross Domestic Products (GDPs) indicators, but there are also some fundamental gains in the areas of education, child and maternal mortality rate are coming down, basic social services and health and life expectancy are increasing.
“The report highlights that these developments are actually taking place and also to enable other countries learn from their experiences and emulate positive developments in their own countries.”
According to him, the positive gains emanating from the countries in the south are products of investments in the key areas that developments are now noticeable.
“Like in the case of education, it empowers people; it broadens the horizon of people and provides more options for people to take care of their own lives. For example, the countries concerned have made important investment in education and health.
If you make investment in health, you increase potential for productivity, people will be healthy, they can work, they are not sick and there is less absenteeism.”
He added: “It should also be noted that the countries concerned have made investment in women, girls’ education and also provide the possibility for women to lead in key institutions. The countries have also created conditions for better living conditions for their citizens. These are kinds of things that are happening and they need to be embraced.”
Some of the leading countries in Africa, according to him, are Ghana, Angola, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Mozambique.
But according to him, there are some positive aspects of the changes in some countries such as Nigeria in spite of some other challenges it is facing currently.
“These positive changes are examples and lessons for the rest of the countries on the continent and others. I want them to look at what is happening in all these countries; there is a lot that they can learn and which can be replicated in their own individual countries to sustain growth and development”, he said.
Meanwhile, the Human Development Report 2013 looks at the evolving geo-politics of the world, examining emerging issues and trends as well as new actors, which are shaping the development landscape.
It argues that striking transformation of a large number of developing countries into dynamic major economies with growing political influence is having a significant impact on human development progress.
According to the report, China has overtaken Japan as the world’s second biggest economy, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in the process while India is reshaping its future with new entrepreneurial creativity and social policy innovation. Brazil is raising its living standards by expanding international relationship and anti-poverty programmes.
The projections developed in the report indicated that the combined economic output of the three leading economies – China, India and Brazil – alone will surpass aggregate production of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom and United States by 2020.
More so, the report claims that Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey and other developing countries are becoming leading actors on the world stage.
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