Your Excellency, Dr. Salim Ahmed Salim
        Secretary General of the OAU,
Your Excellency, Mr. Petros Olango, Deputy Speaker of
        the Ethiopian House of Representatives,
Distinguished Colleagues,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is with open arms that I welcome you to Addis Ababa and to our very own United Nations Conference Center, for this most timely Conference on Democracy, Civil Society and Governance in Africa.  It is very gratifying to see that so soon after the First Annual African Forum on Governance which ECA and the United Nations Development Program  (UNDP)  staged here in July this year, our finest academics, civil society group, and senior civil servants are gathering once again to take up the governance challenge that Africa faces. 

There is no question that the world has a right to pass judgement on the generally poor state of Africa’s governance.  But it is us Africans alone who bear the primary responsibility for improving the situation, with solutions tailored to our peculiar national contexts, faced with the ultimate challenge of eradicating poverty and advancing the socio-economic well-being of the continent’s peoples. 

The role of civil society in bringing about good governance is an important, not to say critical, dimension to the ongoing debate.  We at ECA have organized that - warts and all - Civil society is an actor without whose participation good governance cannot be achieved. This is why in May this year we convened a regional consultative conference of African NGOs and civil society organizations to lay the foundation for the Governance forum. Subsequently, at United Nations headquarters the same month, I participated in the International Conference on Governance and Sustainable Growth and Equity. 

As I articulated at the New York Governance Conference,  I see six fundamental challenges facing us as we begin to forge a path for Africa in the area of governance and popular participation of civil society. 

The FIRST challenge is peacebuilding.  Three decades of conflict  -  latterly mainly internal in character but also at a certain point inter-state  -  have devastated a number of African countries, leaving governments, civil society as well as institutions in ruin.