Africa must show it is not a "hopeless case": Annan


   YAOUNDE, Jan 18 (AFP) - United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan
called
on African leaders Thursday to take action to demonstrate that the world's
poorest continent is "not a hopeless case," and asserted that democracy was
beginning to take hold.
   "We must convince our partners that Africa is not a hopeless case, nor
yet
a passive victim, aspiring only to live on charity," Annan said in his
opening
speech to the 21st Franco-African summit being held in the Cameroon capital
Yaounde.
   "We have to convince our partners in the industrialised world that we
are
worth helping, because we are helping ourselves," Annan told the summit,
where
the central theme is "Africa and Globalisation."
   He warned that economic development depended on "the quality of
governance
a country enjoys" as well as access to education and emerging technologies
such as the internet. On technology, he cited India as an example to look
to.
   "For a relatively small investment, we can bring all kinds of knowledge
within reach of poor people, and enable poor countries to leapfrog some of
the
long and painful stages of development that others had to go through,"
Annan
said.
   But Annan said the tide was turning on the continent against corruption
and
misrule.
   "My own country, Ghana, has given us another fine example of the new
African way of transfering power -- peacefully, through the ballot box," he
said.
   The UN chief said that African voters have been "emboldened by knowledge
of
what is happening in other African countries, or as far away as Yugoslavia."
   Addressing the industrialised world, he warned that aid must be
maintained
if Africa's most pressing problems are to be prevented from spilling out of
the continent.
   "The battle against HIV/AIDS cannot be won in the wider world if it is
lost
in Africa," Annan said, adding: "Nor can the world environment and climate
be
unaffected by the loss of African flora and fauna, of African forests, and
indeed of fertile farmland being turned into desert."
   On conflict resolution, he praised Algeria's President Abdelaziz
Bouteflika
for helping mediate an accord between Eritrea and Ethiopia, and called on
the
parties involved in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo to
work
in the direction of a peaceful resolution.
   Representatives from 51 African countries -- inclusing 24 heads of state
--
and French President Jacques Chirac are gathered at the bi-annual summit.
   sas/jlr

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