Maravi

Let's increase cooperation with other south countries

Let's increase cooperation with other south countries
By Editor
Wednesday February 28, 2007 [02:00]

The government’s initiatives to increase south to south cooperation deserve encouragement. And as President Levy Mwanawasa correctly observed yesterday, Zambia could learn a lot from cooperating closely with Vietnam and improve the living standards of our people. There is therefore need to increase the levels of cooperation through bilateral consultations.

There may be need to seriously consider opening diplomatic missions in countries like Vietnam, Malaysia and South Korea. And in addition to Brazil there may be need to open missions in Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba. We know that missions cost money but if well managed by competent people this may not be an exercise in futility; it may yield very good results.

A country like Vietnam cannot be ignored by any serious Third World or south country. This country is doing very well in many sectors and indeed we can learn a lot through cooperation with it. While Vietnam became a centrally planned economy after the war with the United States ended, economic reforms in the 1990s have helped drive the creation of a sub-national government framework.

Though the centre still exerts substantial control, the sub-national governments have some discretion. We can surely learn something from Vietnamese decentralisation. The issue of decentralisation continues to dodge us and we don’t seem to have a way to the practical challenges we face in this domain.

We can also learn a lot of things from Vietnam in education. Key priorities for Vietnam are provision of basic education to remote and marginalised children and improved teaching quality throughout the system; increased support to universities with additional cutting edge and high-value interventions in tertiary education and support for the knowledge economy; and continuation of support to basic education that addresses both poverty alleviation and qualitative issues. We still have serious problems and challenges in this area and we need the cooperation and support of countries like Vietnam.

Rapid commercial growth, rising living standards, and migration to urban areas are expected to drive Vietnam’s power demand growth at 13 to 15 per cent per year until 2010. Also electricity access has increased dramatically in Vietnam, from around 51 per cent households in 1995 to around 81 per cent now. Again, we have challenges and problems in this area and it will be a good opportunity for us to learn from Vietnam how it is addressing this problem.

Vietnam’s environment is under considerable stress from rapid economic growth, urbanisation and rising human pressure on relatively scarce natural resources. While it has gradually improved its environmental regulatory framework, Vietnam has very limited capacity for implementation. It is therefore feared that continued rapid growth will cause further environmental degradation. We can also learn something from Vietnam’s challenges with the environment. It’s not only from the successes and positive things that we learn something; it is also from the failures and negative things that we learn something.

Vietnam has achieved levels in basic health indicators that are remarkably better than other developing countries with similar or even higher per capita incomes. Much of this achievement has been the result of widespread practices of promoting social solidarity and a relatively egalitarian distribution of wealth and income. And since the early 1990s, Vietnam has presented a clear example of a country in which the trajectory of a concentrated HIV/AIDS epidemic may be greatly curtailed by a highly focused programme aimed at stopping transmission.

Vietnam has succeeded in translating economic growth into poverty reduction in recent years. Despite low per capita GDP the country enjoys infant mortality rates, life expectancy and adult literacy levels at par with richer countries like China. We can surely learn something from this that will help us deal with our own problems in this domain.

Ninety per cent of the poor in Vietnam, or three-quarters of the population, live in the rural areas which is why rural development and agriculture are critical to Vietnam’s development. We have serious rural development problems for which we don’t seem to have answers. We need the cooperation of other countries in this domain.

Ongoing activities in the social development programme in the country include building on successful building experiences using community-based approaches to include decentralised delivery mechanisms in a range of projects, and furthering the gender equality agenda. We can learn something from how all this is helping to further policy dialogue in the country and how it is helping to empower women economically.

We shouldn’t forget that the world economy is being reshaped by new technologies, services and trading relationships. And much of this dynamism is being fuelled by ambitious developing-world nation-states like Brazil, India and South Africa. As governments, businesses and regional blocks in the global south expand their horizons, they increasingly bypass rich northern states.

The idea of south - south cooperation is fuelled by a growing realisation that poor nations might find appropriate, low cost and sustainable solutions to their problems in other developing countries rather than in the rich north.

For example, if African farmers need boreholes to access water, it surely makes more sense to access India’s huge pool of expertise than to send expensive European water engineers. And there is need for us to incorporate this altruistic principle into our foreign policy. With our huge market potential as Third World countries and the special features of our development models, we may support one another and draw on each other’s strong points to achieve common development for mutual benefit.

We are of the view that we should proceed from a strategic height, probe actively and intensely new channels and ways for cooperation, safeguard our common interests to the fullest possible extent and join hands on coping with challenges brought about by economic globalisation. We should strengthen solidarity, closely cooperate and coordinate with each other. We should take an active part in formulating the “rules of the game” in the international economic field, propel the reform of the international economic, financial and trade systems and strive to win over the right to equal development.

We should, on the basis of equality and mutual benefit, actively develop external economic, trade, scientific, technological and cultural cooperation to accelerate our development. Only through uniting ourselves, can we elevate our position in the south-north dialogue and preserve our own interests to the fullest possible extent in the process of globalisation.

Labels: COOPERATION, EDITORIAL

posted by MrK @ 5:46 AM