ITHACA, N.Y. -- A major symposium at Cornell University on democratic reform and poverty alleviation in Africa will take place Oct. 24-26. The event is sponsored by Cornell's Institute for African Development in collaboration with the university's Poverty, Inequality and Development Initiative and Binghamton University's Center on Democratic Performance.

Justice Johann Kriegler of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, that country's highest court, is the keynote speaker. His talk, "Democratic Reform in Africa," will take place Thursday, Oct. 24, at 6 p.m. in the Biotechnology Building's first-floor conference hall on Cornell's campus. It is free and open to the public.

Krieger is perhaps best known for chairing South Africa's electoral commission in 1994 during the country's first racially inclusive elections. In 1999, he served in a similar capacity in East Timor during that country's referendum. As a lawyer in South Africa, he was actively involved in the promotion of human rights and was founding chairman of Lawyers for Human Rights there.

The symposium, which follows on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 25 and 26, in 700 Clark Hall, is also free and open to the public. Participants are world-renowned practitioners, policy-makers and researchers in the field of good governance and poverty reduction -- scholars, economists, lawyers and political scientists. No registration is necessary to attend, but attendees are asked to send their names and affiliations in advance to ciad@cornell.edu or call (607) 255-5499.

A wave of democratic reform began to sweep across Africa more than 15 years ago, in part because of the failure of authoritarian rule to promote sufficient economic development and respect for human rights. Since then, some scholars of Africa and the developing world assert that democracy is becoming a global entitlement, promoted and protected by the collective international process. In addition, the international community increasingly is stipulating that economic aid must be conditioned on good governance. Africans themselves in the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) have devised standards for economic and political governance.

Muna Ndulo, director of Cornell's Institute for African Development, says that, with the elaboration of the NEPAD initiative, the time is right for such a conference. While democratic reform in Africa has been slow and difficult to achieve, he says, enough time has passed to begin to assess what progress Africa has made in political and economic development in recent years. Ndulo and symposium organizer Jackie Sayegh hope that participants will share successful civil-society strategies that have been used to advance good governance and reduce poverty, which, in turn, may lead to disadvantaged populations gaining more control over their lives.

Among the symposium participants are Ann and Robert Seidman, professors emeriti of law and economics, Boston University, and former economic advisers to political leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah and governments in Africa and Asia; Brian Levy, manager, public sector reform and capacity-building unit, World Bank. Also participating are Cornell professors in economics, law, city and regional planning, and civil and environmental engineering and leaders of Cornell's Institute for Public Affairs and Einaudi Center for International Studies and Binghamton University's Center on Democratic Performance.

For more information on the symposium, contact Sayegh at (607) 255-6849 or visit this web site: http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/Africa/ .