Over the last decade the international community has accorded the special needs of Africa a high degree of attention on the multilateral agenda.

In adopting the UN Millennium Declaration (A/RES/ 55/2) in September 2000, Heads of State and Government agreed to take special measures to address the challenges of poverty eradication and sustainable development in Africa.

The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development reaffirmed the need to increase international support for Africa’s efforts to achieve sustainable development, and devoted a specific chapter of actions dedicated towards this goal. In November 2002, the UN General Assembly adopted a declaration (A/RES/57/2) and a resolution (A/RES/57/7) on the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), affirming the UN system’s support for the implementation of NEPAD and recommending that the international community use NEPAD as its framework to support development in Africa.

In the World Summit 2005 Outcome Document (A/RES/60/1), world leaders underscored the need for the international community to meet the special needs of Africa and resolved to strengthen cooperation with NEPAD by providing coherent support for the programmes drawn up by African leaders within that framework, including by mobilizing internal and external financial resources and facilitating approval of such programmes by the multilateral financial institutions.

In General Assembly resolutions A/RES/61/229 of 22 December 2006 and A/RES/62/179 of 19 December 2007, the Assembly decided to convene, during its sixty-third session in 2008, a High-Level meeting on the theme “Africa’s development needs: state of implementation of various commitments, challenges and the way forward.”

In March 2008, the General Assembly approved a resolution on the ‘Modalities, format and organization of the high-level meeting on Africa’s development needs’ (A/62/L.29/Rev.1). In its resolution, the General Assembly decided that the High-Level Event be held on 22 September 2008, prior to the general debate of the sixty-third session of the General Assembly. It also decided that the meeting be held at the highest possible political level, and result in a political declaration on Africa’s development needs.

In preparation for the High-Level Event in September 2008, IISD’s Reporting Service’s African Regional Coverage Project established a dedicated information portal to report on issues related to the High-Level Event and Africa’s development agenda.