"A decade has elapsed since the NAASP was first established during the Asian-African Summit 2005 in Jakarta. However, this cooperation is still not effective as a sense of ownership among its member states is not strong," Acting Head of the Regional Assessment and Development Agency, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Salman Al Farisi stated here on Monday (Apr. 4).
According to Salman, over the last ten years, only Indonesia and South Africa have played an active role in delivering cooperation initiatives and realizing the cooperation agreement of the NAASP.
Salman explained that Indonesia, as a state representative of the Asian region, had implemented numerous initiatives in several fields, such as agriculture, fisheries, small and medium enterprises, communications, intellectual property rights, climate change, satellite technology, as well as trade, and capacity building.
One of the achievements of the NAASP is offering capacity building assistance to Palestine, which was the only participating country in the Asian-African Conference in 1955 that is still under the Israeli occupation.
Through the NAASP, the countries in Asia and Africa have committed to providing capacity building assistance to 10 thousand Palestinians during the period between 2008 and 2013.
"The countries in Asia and Africa have the potential to build technical cooperation since there are several experts in developing countries. We need funding, which can be obtained from a third party through a trilateral cooperation," Salman remarked.
He emphasized that the global economy was highly dependent on the economic growth in Asian and African countries.
"When the global economy declines, the Asian and African countries tend to be stable and have positive influences on the world economy," Salman noted.
In order to assess the development of the NAASP, the Center for the Study and Development of Asia Pacific and Africa and the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in collaboration with the Study Center for Asia-Africa, Padjadjaran University, and the Museum of Asia-African Conference are organizing a Study Forum for Foreign Policy themed "Quo Vadis A Decade of the New Asian-African Strategic Partnership" on April 5 in Bandung.
In addition to governments and diplomats, the forum will involve academics, businessmen, and media to establish a strong NAASP framework, which is believed to strengthen the relationship between Asia and Africa.(*)
Pewarta: Libertina Widyamurti AmbariEditor : Chandra Hamdani Noer
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