LONDON Africa has a new ability to take its future into its own hands, but still needs help to beat poverty, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Horst Koehler and World Bank President James Wolfensohn said on Wednesday.

Writing in the ***** International Herald Tribune****, the two officials, who recently visited the continent and met 22 heads of state, said there had been a fundamental change in the way in which the continent's leaders viewed the way to escape poverty.

"Africa's leaders are committed to far-reaching changes that will help the continent escape from the vicious circle of poverty and share in the prosperity enjoyed by so many elsewhere in the past two decades," Koehler and Wolfensohn wrote in a piece on the opinion pages of the newspaper.

Highlighting the need for action in a continent where half the populace lives on less than $1 a day and development aid had fallen to $19 a head in 1998 from $32 a head in 1980, the two financiers said that while the international community must be prepared to take its share of the burdens.

This means granting trading access, especially in the agriculture and textile sectors, which could be worth "billions of dolllars per year" to Africa.

The rich nations of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development spend $300 billion a year subsidizing agriculture, a figure which is equivalent to the entire economic output of sub-Saharan Africa, they said.

The IMf and World Bank would also "gladly join a campaign" to convince rich nations -- the two bodies' most influential shareholders -- to increase aid to a United Nations target of 0.7 percent of gross national product from around 0.24 percent now.

It also means more debt relief and help in the fight to contain aids, Koehler and Wolfensohn said.

But key to poverty reduction is the private sector and the adjustments which will attract private-sector investment.

"With Africans themselves insisting on leaders who govern for the good of people rather than for themselves, the sharply disappointing experience of the last 40 years can become a thing of the past," Koehler and Wolfensohn said.

(Reuter)