UN General Assembly
1997

In spite of all this, for the immense majority of Africans the will to survive is stronger than despair, and hope prevails over resignation. The ministerial meeting of the Security Council devoted to Africa, held on the commendable initiative of the United States last 25 September, led to a fruitful exchange of views that showed us a real will on the part of the international community to become more actively, more significantly and more concretely involved in a new type of partnership with Africa in order to contribute to its development. The signs of this real readiness on the part of the developed countries have proliferated in recent years, as we can see, inter alia, from the resolutions of the G-7 adopted in Lyon and in Denver, assistance programmes of the eighth European Development Fund, President Clinton’s initiative for a partnership for economic growth and opportunity and the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD I), and so on. All in all, it can be said that the will exists to help Africa emerge from poverty and underdevelopment, that