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Adebayo Adedeji
Today, a symposium will be held to honor the memory of Professor Adebayo Adedeji, who died on April 25, 2018 and who was buried yesterday in Ijebu-Ode. I first met Adebayo Adedeji at the summer session of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations held in July 1987 in Geneva, Switzerland. Adedeji, who was attending this meeting, had mentioned to the person, who introduced me Adedeji, that he needed a delegate (representative of the member state) to help make circulate the Abuja Declaration on Economic Recovery and Long-Term Development in Africa. official document of the United Nations General Assembly.
The Abuja Declaration is the result of an international conference on Africa convened in June 1987 to review progress made in the implementation of the UN Program of Action United for Economic Recovery and Development of Africa. on Africa in June 1986. The document was then distributed on request. My offer of assistance made a deep impression on Adedeji. Since then, our friendship has been forged. Much later, I had the privilege of working with Adedeji at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa. Adedeji has dedicated more than five decades of his life to the national, regional and international civil service. Adedeji's Contributions at the National Level
As Federal Commissioner (Minister) for Economic Development and Reconstruction (1971-1975), he made three important contributions. He directed efforts to articulate the second national development plan 1970-1974 and the third national development 1975-1980; led the launching effort of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS); and proposed the establishment of the National Youth Corps in 1973 as an instrument for promoting and supporting national cohesion, particularly after the devastating civil war of 1967-1970. When Adedeji was appointed executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa in 1975, the federal government was reluctant to release him and, in a compromise, Adedeji was asked to chair a committee to review the policy. foreigner from Nigeria. This contribution from Adedeji is less noticeable in the comments on his contributions at the national level. However, the reforms proposed by his commission formed the basis of the new orientation of foreign policy pursued by the government that came to power in July 1975. While the federal government of Nigeria was reluctant to release Adedeji to ECA, Guinean President Sekou Toure, with whom Adedeji interacted during talks on the formation of ECOWAS, expressed his dissatisfaction that Adedeji, a pan-Africanist, even deigns to agree to lead the regional arm of the neo-colonial institution. President Toure, a radical pan-Africanist, regarded the United Nations as a neo-colonial institution. Adedeji told me that he retorted by asking President Toure: and if the neo-colonial institution could be made to serve African interests? Ironically, when Guinea was struck by an earthquake in December 1983, the Secretary-General designated Adedeji as his special representative in Guinea. This anecdote is important because it explains a major motivation for the work of Adedeji at ECA, where he made his mark on the regional and international scene.
Adedeji, intrepid advocate of Africa's development
The work of the Economic Commission for Africa, under the leadership of Adedeji, on the development of Africa involved two important and interdependent components: a rigorous analysis of African economic trends and performance; and advocacy for the development of the region. Much has been written about ECA's advocacy work, as I will highlight shortly. But, as I argued in my chapter in the book titled "African Development in the 21st Century: Theories and Contributions of Adebayo Adedeji" published in 2015; ECA has largely contributed to the prediction of Africa's long-term economic and social trends. The most significant of these prognoses has been set out in a report, which was personally signed by Adedeji, titled ECA and Africa's Development, 1983-2008: A Preliminary Study, which outlined two possible scenarios for the future. Africa on a horizon of twenty-five years: "Horrible future" (pessimistic) and "voluntary future" (optimistic). In particular, I noted that "many of the major criticisms in the long-term prospective study of ECA were widely proven." This has been demonstrated by the fact that the 1980s and 1990s were decades lost for Africa's development. Aware of the risk that Africa could be trapped in the "horrific scenario", if the appropriate policies were not adopted, Adedeji used its advocacy work to urge African leaders and external partners to move the region to achieve the results of the "futuristic scenario".
Advocacy work for the development of Africa by Adedeji during his tenure at ECA in 1975-1991 took place in three stages, involving more and more major political conflicts with the institutions international financial, as Richard Jolly explains in his book of 2015. The first step was in 1976, shortly after his appointment to ECA. ECA then articulated the Revised Framework of Principles for the Implementation of the New International Economic Order in Africa. The second step was the adoption of the Lagos Plan of Action for Economic Development of Africa (1980). Although the document was adopted under the auspices of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) – the forerunner of the African Union – ECA, under the leadership of the African Union. Adedeji, was the intellectual brain of this document. The Lagos Plan had both emphasized the notion of self-sufficiency and placed most of the blame on Africa's poor economic performance in a hostile international environment. In response, the World Bank published in 1981 Berg's report, known as Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action arguing that Africa's poor economic performance was not due to external but internal factors, especially economic mismanagement.
Shortly after the adoption of the Lagos Africa Plan, Africa faced two major problems: the global recession of 1980-82 and the severe drought and famine that hit the countries of the Horn of Africa and the Sahel in 1984-1985. In response, ECA and OAU worked together to articulate the Priority Program for Africa's Economic Recovery adopted by the OAU Summit in 1985. This document was subsequently approved by the 13th extraordinary session of the United Nations General Assembly. Economic Recovery and Development in 1986. This program had a lasting institutional legacy at United Nations Headquarters in New York, as it led to the establishment of an Office of the Special Coordinator for Africa, initially placed in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Foreign Affairs, to undertake global advocacy for Africa. The Office was later transformed into the United Nations Office of the Special Adviser on Africa in 2003, following the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the New Partnership for Development of the United Nations. Africa at its 2002 session.
The Third Step and Advocacy The work on economic policy for Africa was articulated by ECA under the guidance of Adedeji of the African Alternative Framework. structural adjustment programs in Africa for socio-economic recovery and transformation (AAF-SAP, 1989). This document highlighted several shortcomings of the structural adjustment programs (SAPs) of the Bretton forestry institutions, namely that the SAPs were too focused on achieving financial balances leading to drastic cuts in public spending in the social sectors. ; called for easing policy conditionalities for official loans; and advocated debt reduction for African countries, which was anathema at the time. A year earlier, ECA had articulated the Khartoum Declaration on the Human Dimension of Africa's Economic Recovery, placing ECA under the leadership of Adedeji, one of the few supporters of the concept. human-centered development. In a real and important sense, the ideas advocated in the AAF-SAP and the Khartoum Declaration, as well as UNICEF's advocacy for an "adjustment with a human face", laid the intellectual foundation for the reduction of poverty and economic inclusion. Africa and the rest of the world.
But there were many other aspects of the African Alternative Framework that even his critics admitted were bold, innovative, and commendable. For example, on July 13, 1989, in an editorial titled "Imperfect Plan for Africa," referring to AAF-SAP, the Financial Times, praised ECA's frankness by highlighting the "widespread lack of democracy in Africa "and his" call ". for a review of public spending priorities to allocate more resources to agriculture "instead of military spending.
The United Nations Project on Intellectual History, an independent initiative created to document ideas launched by the United Nations system in the field of economic and social development, recognized in its publication The Power of Ideas of the United Nations: Lessons from the first 60 years.Adedeji led this organization in political debates on the adjustment Structural, noting that in the 1980s, alternatives to adjustment became a focus for UN analysis and debate.The Economic Commission for Africa presented the African Agenda for Action. structural adjustment in Africa […] according to which the criteria used by the World Bank were too narrow and led to inefficient programs "- a reason for which adjustment programs have been substantially modified and virtually abandoned.
Adedeji – an African regional integration enthusiast
Through his spearheading work with ECOWAS, Adedeji used the ECA platform to launch initiatives to promote the development of African countries. regional integration in other subregions of Africa. Thus, he strongly supported the creation of the preferential trading area for East Africa and Southern Africa (PTA) in 1981, which has since been transmuted into the Market of Eastern and Southern Africa. He also led the efforts to establish the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) in 1983. The culmination of his efforts to promote regional integration was his strong support for the Treaty. establishing the African Economic Community (AEC) adopted at the OAU. Summit in Abuja in 1991.
Working with Salim Ahmed Salim (then Secretary General of the OAU) and Babacar Ndiaye (then President of the African Development Bank), the three institutions agreed to form a joint Secretariat, composed of the staff of the three regional organizations, to support the implementation of the Abuja Treaty on the ACS. He also sat on the Committee to review the ECOWAS Treaty in 1992, one year after his retirement from ECA. Adekeye Adebajo, a Nigerian researcher on international relations, likened Adedeji to the French technocrat, Jean Monnet, who spearheaded efforts to create the European Coal and Steel Community, the forerunner of the is transformed into a European Union. And SKB Asante, the Ghanaian political economist, has called Adedeji "the father of African integration".
Adedeji, a deeply committed builder of African regional institutions
Adedeji played an equally important role in building regional institutions. The most significant proof of this is that it has turned ECA from an institution of statistical capacity-building and data collection and analysis into an intellectual power for Africa and Africa. a laboratory to generate new ideas on regional cooperation and integration. Convinced of the desire to bridge the technological gap in many areas, he has created several ECA-sponsored institutions in fields as diverse as mapping, solar energy, aerospace studies, engineering design and manufacturing. He contributed to the strengthening of the African Union by chairing the African Union High-Level Audit Group (2007) and the evolution and growth of the Africa Mechanism. Peer Review, of which he was one of the pioneers and president
As I wrote elsewhere, an effective leader is generally seen as a leader who keeps his promises or creates a new narrative or positive for the people or institutions that he or she directs. The entrepreneurial spirit, on the other hand, involves using great tact to direct the affairs of people and institutions and to better deal with unforeseen crises that do not would do it from other leaders under similar circumstances. Adedeji was both an effective leader and a statesman. Few can boast of having helped shape Africa's development agenda, as Adedeji did. He left his footprints in the sands of Africa's development. Farewell, scholarly state man!
Ejeviome Eloho Otobo co-edited with Amos Sawyer and Afeikhena Jerome, African Development in the 21st Century: Theories and Contributions of Adebayo Adedeji (2015)
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