South Africa's ambassador to the United Nations, Dumisani Kumalo, painted a bleak picture of the UN's 10-year New Agenda for the Development of Africa (UN-Nadaf) programme when he addressed the general assembly in New York on Monday.
He said statistics showing resource flows to Africa highlighted the deteriorating situation.
Between 1992 and 1998, there had been a decrease in domestic savings rates and a continuing flight of capital from Africa which had reached an estimated total of about R2,6-trillion.
There was a drop of more than 50 percent in overseas development aid flows, and persistently low and decreasing direct foreign investment in Africa.
Other negative factors were deterioration in terms of trade for the continent, the escalating debt burden and the decline of the per-capita income from R5 618 in 1980 to R5 160 in 1998.
"All these paint a very bleak picture of the problems facing our continent," said Kumalo. "These signs seem to suggest that once we come to the final review of the UN-Nadaf in 2002, we will be faced with an even greater challenge than we had at the beginning of the agenda (in 1992).
"We risk the prospect of a tragic confirmation that Africa's economic and financial situation has worsened in the decade that UN-Nadaf has been in place."
But Kumalo also said there were reasons for optimism as the priorities of UN-Nadaf showed.
Africans had started finding solutions for the continent's problems amid a growing understanding of the particular nature of their problems and challenges. The wide range of existing bilateral and multilateral initiatives was testimony to this.
"Africans are in the process of defining the broad priorities for our continent. We choose to call this process the African Renaissance," said Kumalo.
This meant establishing democratic political systems and ensuring these systems were based on African specifics so they addressed the competing interests of different social groups in each country.
It also meant improving the continent's capacity to deal with issues of peace and stability, achieving sustainable development and improving the standard of living of the majority of people.
It meant eradicating the debt burden and shifting the continent from being a supplier of raw materials and an importer of manufactured goods, as well as ensuring the emancipation of women and confronting the HIV-Aids pandemic. - Sapa