K.Y. Amoako, President of the African Center for Economic Transformation, Kumi Naidoo, Secretary General of CIVICUS, and Ashraf Ghani, Chairman of the Institute for State Effectiveness and former Finance Minister of Afghanistan, discuss the most effective means of helping developing countries.
They focus on the importance of organizing aid efforts, and of developing the infrastructure to disseminate the money properly.
Bio
Dr. K.Y. Amoako
Dr. K.Y. Amoako is the President of the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET), a nonprofit institution based in Accra, Ghana, promoting high-quality policy analysis and advisory services and driving sustained growth and development in Africa. He led the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) from 1995-2005 at the rank of Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations. Under his leadership, ECA was transformed to more effectively serve African policy makers, to amplify the African voice internationally and to influence African partners. Dr. Amoako has served alongside leading development experts and political leaders and on high-level international commissions and task forces, including the Commission for HIV/AIDS and Governance in Africa convened by the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Commission for Africa established and chaired by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health chaired by Professor Jeffrey Sachs.
Prior to ECA, he was Director of Education and Social Policy at the World Bank. Dr. Amoako was a Distinguished African Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in 2006. He obtained his PhD in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley and was awarded a Doctor of Laws degree, honoris causa, by Addis Ababa University in 2003, and a Doctor of Letters degree, honoris causa, by the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana, in 2005, in recognition of his contribution to Africa’s development.
Elizabeth Farnsworth
Elizabeth Farnsworth was chief correspondent and principal substitute anchor of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer from 1995-2000. She then became a senior correspondent, reporting mostly from overseas, and now freelances for The NewsHour and produces documentaries. In recent years, she has reported from Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Chile, Haiti and Vietnam. Her 2001 four-part series on the AIDS crisis in Botswana and Malawi received the 2001 Silver World Medal from the New York Festivals and a national Emmy nomination. Her documentary, Thanh's War, which aired on PBS in 1991, garnered a CINE Golden Eagle and a San Francisco International Film Festival Golden Gate Award. Her writings have appeared in Foreign Policy, World Policy Journal, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, Mother Jones and other publications. She has lived in Peru and Chile and has a Master's Degree in Latin American History from Stanford University. Farnsworth is Co-producer, with Patricio Lanfranco, of The Judge and the General, a feature-length documentary about the legal pursuit of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, which will air on PBS next year. She is a member of the World Affairs Council of Northern California Board of Trustees and the Advisory Council of the Human Rights Center of the University of California, Berkeley.
Ashraf Ghani
Ashraf Ghani is chairman of the Institute for State Effectiveness, established in 2005 to promote the ability of states to serve their citizens. He is the former finance minister of Afghanistan and chancellor of Kabul University, and he served as a UN adviser to the process that led to the Bonn Agreement for Afghanistan in 2001.
He became chief adviser to Afghan President Karzai during the interim administration and then served as finance minister for the duration of the transitional administration. He is credited with the design of Afghanistan's integrated political, economic, and security strategy between 2001 and 2005. He is a member of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, an initiative of the UN Development Program, and co-author of the forthcoming book The Framework: Fixing Failed States.
Dr. Kumi Naidoo
Kumi Naidoo is the Secretary-General of CIVICUS, the World Alliance for Citizen Participation. Prior to this position, he served in several leadership positions in the Adult Education Sector in South Africa. He has also worked as a researcher, journalist, university lecturer and youth counselor, and was also a member of the Commonwealth Foundation NGO Advisory Committee.
Dr. Naidoo was born in South Africa, but escaped in his twenties, returning after the fall of apartheid to head the South African Non-Government Organization Coalition (SANGOCO). He played a key role in South Africa’s transition to democracy through his involvement in the Independent Electoral Commission in 1994.
As head of CIVICUS, a global network of civil society organizations, with more than 1,000 members in 110 countries, Dr. Naidoo implemented various programs committed to promoting civic existence, civic engagement and civic expression around the world. One of these programs is the Civil Society Watch, which champions the right of civic association and citizen action by mobilizing timely, principled and helpful responses to events or action that threaten these basic rights. Other CIVICUS programs aim at promoting an enabling environment for civil society and democratizing global governance.
Dr. Naidoo is a member of the Friends of the Chair, a group of representatives from civil society invited by South African President Thabo Mbeki to participate in a dialogue on the role of civil society in the Johannesburg Summit. During that meeting, Dr. Naidoo stressed the need for civil society and governments to work together to reform the UN so that future global policymaking initiatives become more democratic.
Dr. Naidoo is a Rhodes Scholar with a DPhil in Politics from Magdalen College, Oxford.
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