Prime Minister Meles visits the Republic of Korea
[From: A Week in the Horn of Africa – Dec. 2, 2011 issue]
Prime Minister Meles has been on a four day official visit to South Korea this week at the invitation of the President of the Republic of Korea, Lee Myung-bak. His visit follows the visit of President Lee to Ethiopia and two other African countries in July. At a summit meeting on Monday, President Lee and Prime Minister Meles signed a memorandum of understanding on industrial cooperation, and South Korea agreed to help Ethiopia develop its textile and leather industry though a sharing of development experience and knowledge. President Lee expressed his satisfaction that relations between the two countries had moved forward rapidly since his visit to Ethiopia in July, with Ethiopia moving to reopen its embassy in Seoul. He hoped that the Prime Minister’s visit would help to expand further all-round cooperation.
The Prime Minister said Ethiopia considered South Korea an important model for its economic development and he hoped for greater co-operation in nurturing textile and leather industries and establishing factories. He also welcomed a plan put forward by President Lee which would involve the invitation of 300 descendents of Ethiopian veterans of the 1950-53 Korean War for vocational training in South Korea. This, the President noted, was part of a program to repay Ethiopia for the help it provided during the war. Prime Minister Meles said this would help train workers needed for Ethiopia’s economic development. One of the core sectors of Korea/Ethiopia development cooperation is education and resource training which focuses on rural development, health, education and environment and is expected to have a positive contribution on the implementation of Ethiopia’s Growth and Transformation Plan.
Ethiopia has been a focus of South Korea’s efforts to transfer development knowledge to Africa, and South Korea has more than doubled its official development assistance to Ethiopia to US $ 10.32 million last year, helping to draw up a “green growth” economic development plan. It has also helped to establish the Agricultural Transformation Agency, modelled on Korea’s former Economic Planning Board which was credited with designing and implementing South Korea’s development in the 1960s and 1970s.
In an interview Prime Minister Meles noted that he had been to South Korea twice before, in 1998 when the country was suffering from the currency crisis of the previous year, and again last year to attend the G20 Summit at Seoul. He had been impressed to see how well South Korea had overcome the currency crisis and weathered the 2008 global financial crisis. He said one characteristic of Korea’s success was its capacity to use adversity and challenge as a source of opportunity. This was one of the elements of its success – the capacity to reinvent itself as necessary. Korea, of course, has achieved an ‘economic miracle’ and Prime Minister Meles said he was eager to learn from the developmental model of the late former President, Park Chung-hee. He said that what interested him was how Korea rose from poverty to become a rich country and in its experiences; President Park had successfully led Korea’s economic development.
Prime Minister Meles also attended the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness held this week in the city of Busan to consider the lack of progress in the International Aid Transparency Initiative. There is widespread agreement of the need for a broader and deeper partnership at all levels of development, a set of effective principles and a revitalized global effort to reach the Millennium Development Goals as well as recognition that the poorest and most fragile states need security, capacity and special consideration, and that achieving results must be based on policies that encourage direct participation by everybody in the development process. Speaking in advance of his presence at the meeting, Prime Minister Meles called on donor nations to provide quality aid, noting that development assistance alone cannot lead to industrialization. Most development aid, especially from western nations, was used for social services, for primary healthcare, primary education and similar areas. This was very valuable and important but developing countries also needed to overcome their lack of infrastructure and skills through more focused investment in these areas. “Development aid can be effective or its impact on development can be very little”, he said. The quality of aid to Africa had not been of good quality and had been largely focused “on managing poverty better than eliminating it.”
************
Leave a Comment