UN General Assembly
2005

the recent measures of debt cancellation for certain African countries and the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Debt Initiative, the debt burden continues to hamper any improvement in the economies of developing countries, which now find themselves in perpetual dependence on donors. Clearly, Africa is falling further and further behind the objectives of the Millennium Development Goals and will continue to do so if its debt burden is not drastically alleviated. Since the mechanisms planned for bringing the continent out of debt have not yet borne fruit, we should, apart from the partial measures which we should welcome, envisage bolder and more durable solutions. Based on this concern, the African ministers of finance met to discuss the strategy for debt reduction in Africa in May of this year in Dakar, under the aegis of the African Union. This was in preparation for a conference during which the President of the Republic of Senegal, His Excellency Abdoulaye Wade, proposed to the African Union that it conduct an “x-ray” of African debt. The economic recovery of the developing