The 2010 UNCTAD Economic Development in Africa report has been launched in Accra, Ghana. This year’s report titled “South-South Cooperation: Africa and the New Forms of Development Partnerships” examines recent trends in the economic relationships of Africa with other developing countries and the new forms of partnership that are animating those relationships.

The increasing role of large developing countries in global trade, finance, investment and governance, coupled with their rapid economic growth, has stimulated debate on the implications for Africa´s development.

The report urges African nations to intensify efforts at developing better productive capacities to maximize their gains from the emerging partnerships and the gradual global shift of economic power to the East from the West. African countries, the report states “have to produce goods with high income elasticities of demand and that present greater opportunities for export market expansion”.

The report comprises five chapters dealing with the challenges and opportunities in South-South cooperation, Africa’s trade with developing countries, southern official flows to Africa, southern Foreign Direct Investment to Africa and making South-South Cooperation work for Africa.

Africa-South Cooperation, the report concludes, has the potential to enhance Africa´s capacity to address its development challenges but the full realization of the benefits requires gearing cooperation towards the development of productive capacities across the region.

Launching the report, Third World Network-Africa’s (TWN-Af), Gyekye Tanoh identified two key factors that underline the background to the UNCTAD study. These factors are the global financial crisis in which the BRIC countries led by China are rebalancing global economic power and Africa’s over reliance on primary commodity exports -- as the financial and subsequent economic crises have amply exposed.

Presently, Africa as a continent does not have a unified strategy relating to Africa-South cooperation and this is evidenced in part, for example, by the way in which this was an UNCTAD, and not an African Union, report.

The Accra launch was part of a global launch of the 2010 UNCTAD report.

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