According to Anwarul Chowdhury of the office of the United Nations High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States, the conference looked at seeking solutions through which the LDCs can solve problems that hamper their development and prevent them from competing fairly in international trade.
It also aimed to identify concrete practical measures, including programmes and projects, for the beneficial integration of LDCs in the world economy. It also looked to assist in building coalitions among action LDCs as well as partnerships between LDCs and their development partners, in pursuit of this goal, by bringing together all relevant actors. The conference also provided a forum for sharing experience, lessons learned and best practices," said Mr Chowdhury in a statement.
Among the problems that the have been noted as holding many LDCs back are the structural weaknesses of their economies, low human, institutional, technological, trade and productive capacities, poor physical and social infrastructure, degradation of environment and geographical handicaps, limited capability to mobilise domestic resources and lack of enabling environments to promote entrepreneurship and attract foreign investment.
Lately, Africa's position in global trade has been made even more uncertain by the growing political and economic influence of the emerging economies from Asia like China and India.
Like the other 30 per cent of the world's LDCs, Africa has largely been marginalised in global trade in the past, although the LDCs have only recently started gaining some ground over their counterparts in the developed world.
Only four years ago, according to statistics from the World Bank, Africa's share of world exports had dropped by nearly 60 per cent - from 3.5 per cent in 1970 to less than 2 per cent in 2003 - a decline that represented an income loss of at least $70 billion annually .
That trend is now changing, but only marginally. The latest figures from the World Trade Organisation (WTO) show that in 2006, Africa's exports rose by 21 per cent, faster than imports, which are estimated to have increased by nearly 16 per cent.
"The share of Africa in world exports reached its highest level since 1990. Although most of Africa's export growth can be attributed to the rise in oil exports, it is a noticeable development that non-oil exporting African countries increased their exports by about 16 per cent," said the WTO state of the world economy report titled, "World Trade [in] 2006, Prospects for 2007," which was released in April.
Africa's improved performance in 2006 significantly contributed to a relatively stronger level of expansion of merchandise exports for the LDCs in 2006, which capped a relatively good performance over the past few years, according to the WTO report.
"Least-developed countries' exports are estimated to have increased by about 30 per cent, to $108 billion in 2006.
Their share in world merchandise exports reached 0.9 per cent, the highest level since 1980 (the first year for which records are kept)," says the report.
But with the WTO also uncertain that Africa and the other LDCs will consolidate on last year's improved performance, it is evident that the LDCs have still generally failed to consistently benefit from a liberalised global trade regime.
It is on the back of these doubts that the ministerial conference has set out to highlight the need for the beneficial integration of LDCs in the global economy as a prerequisite for their sustainable development.
Consequently, a series of discussions have been organised to study why LDCs still fail to reap maximum benefits from the liberalisation of international trade, expansion of foreign direct investment, integration of financial markets and technological innovations in the same way as the developed countries.
Energy, trade and investment, agriculture, and technology have been picked out for special attention at the conference, due to the impact that they are also bound to have on the LDCs' achievement of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
The ministerial conference, organised by the UN under the theme "Making Globalisation Work for LDCs," comes at a particularly crucial time for Africa as it continues to negotiate for Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with Europe.
Source: Daily Nation
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