UNU-WIDER Recovering from the Global Crisis: Towards an Action Plan for Africa and the Least Developed Countries

On 25 June 2009 UNU-WIDER, in collaboration with UNU-ONY, the Office of the Special Adviser on Africa (OSAA) and  the Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (OHRLLS) organised a side event at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to focus on the plight of African and other least developed countries.

The keynote address was given my by H.E. Ms. Asha-Rose Migiro, United Nations Deputy Secretary General, followed by statements from Mr. Cheick Sidi Diarra (United Nations Under-Secretary General and Special Advisor on Africa and High Representative for the Least Developed Countries , Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States and H.E. Dr. Dipu Moni, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh.

Wim Naudé, Senior Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER, provided a background paper, co-authored with Augustin Fosu, entitled ‘The Global Economic Crisis: Towards Syndrome-Free Recovery for Africa’. This was followed by a panel session, with panellists consisting of Mr. Alexander Aboagye (Senior Economic Adviser, UNDP), Mr. Stephen Groff (OECD), Mr. Alhaji Bamanga Tukur (Chairman of the African Business Roundtable) and Mr. Roger Nord (IMF).

Speakers and panellists during the UNU-OSAA-OHRLLS side event during the United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Development, 25 June 2009

The background paper, presentations and statements from this event is available on the UNU’s website dedicated to the global economic crisis, at:
http://www.ony.unu.edu/events-forums/events/2009/towards-an-action-plan-for-afr.html.  

Other UNU work related to the global economic crisis can be accessed at the following address: http://www.ony.unu.edu/media/List%20of%20Related%20UNU%20Publications.pdf

Furthermore, on the occasion of this event the United Nations University (UNU) put together a multimedia intellectual forum on the economic crisis, entitled the “UNU Conversation Series”. The objective is to bring clarity to some of the key issues at the centre of the economic crisis, to explain what is at stake and what should be done to overcome the problems that we currently face. With this in mind, the UNU brought together some of the most important intellectual and policy voices from around the globe, including Olivier Blanchard, Janos Bogardi, Francois Bourguignon, Noam Chomsky, Richard Cooper, Augustin Fosu, Evsey Gurvich, Robert Johnson, Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Wim Naude, Léonce Ndikumana, Eisuke Sakakibara, Luc Soete, Joseph Stiglitz, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Aude Zieseniss de Thuin, to name a few. The multimedia intellectual forum can be accessed at the following link: http://ony.unu.edu/unu_eco/unu_economiccrisis.htm.