Creative artists in Africa can help UN achieve key development goals – Annan
Creative artists in Africa can help the United Nations in its efforts to achieve such goals as reducing poverty and hunger set by world leaders at the Millennium Summit in 2000, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today in a message to the continent’s premier film festival.
Creative artists in Africa can help the United Nations in its efforts to achieve such goals as reducing poverty and hunger set by world leaders at the Millennium Summit in 2000, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today in a message to the continent’s premier film festival.
“By informing and educating your audiences, you can help us to mobilize the resources and energy needed to reach these goals, which are so vital to continent's future,” the Secretary-General said in a message of support to the Pan-African Film and Television Festival (FESPACO) in Burkina Faso.
Some 150 participants at the festival took time out today from the movies to discuss what African actors can do to help fight HIV/AIDS at a panel organized with the UN Development Programme (UNDP).
The Secretary-General said film and television professions can “help us to better understand contemporary Africa – not only its problems, but the positive changes that are happening everywhere and are a real cause for hope.”
Mr. Annan added that the creation of the African Union and the New Partnership for Africa's Development have raised new hopes. “By putting your cameras at the service of the people, you can help breathe life into the vision of an Africa on the move towards the ‘millennium goals’ and towards a more peaceful and prosperous future,” he said.