UN development agency addresses inequities in Africa's Great Lakes region

More than 70 senior officials from Africa are attending a United Nations regional workshop this week in Rwanda, learning to make poverty reduction programmes work and to create national networks between policy makers and scholars doing applied research.

"Rwanda, a country which is endeavouring to address past inequities in its society, is writing a new chapter by pursuing policies that improve the lives of the poor, giving them room to participate fully economically, politically and socially," said UN Development Programme (UNDP) Assistant Administrator Abdoulie Janneh, who also heads the agency's Regional Bureau for Africa.

Rwanda was, therefore, a perfect venue from which to launch the project as African countries worked to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of reducing an array of socioeconomic ills by 2015, he said.

Seventy-four officials at the three-day gathering, which began Tuesday and ends tomorrow, would examine pro-poor economic policy options, building coalitions around such policies and preparing to build capacity in the countries concerned, as well as strengthening economic policy frameworks for the poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs) that low-income countries must prepare, UNDP said.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), "a PRSP describes the macroeconomic, structural and social policies and programmes that a country will pursue over several years to promote broad-based growth and reduce poverty, as well as external financing needs and the associated sources of financing."

The $2 million workshop project would also be held in Zambia, Mali, Chad, Sierra Leone and South Africa, UNDP said.