While dramatic events unfold daily in Eastern Europe, the United Nations General Assembly is taking up another question that is no less critical. It is the economic situation in Africa and the need for continued policy reforms, to transform the economic structure of that continent.

Africa’s economic woes, compounded by debt distress, fail to command front-page attention because they pose no special threat to the international financial system. And while world leaders have announced steps to ease Africa’s debt burden, Africa continues to stay on the back burner for their senior treasury officials who are preoccupied with the trillion-dollar debt problems of the middle - income countries.

But the fact is that African external debt, while it amounts to just a small change in the overall Third World debt picture, is imposing intolerable burdens bon the continents people. To pay it, African countries have to squeeze their peoples and deprive their children of school-books, medicine and often food.

African states suffer today because in the ’70s they borrowed money to finance their development-which, most people forget, had yielded quite impressive results up to then. They also took loans to meet shocks such as high oil prices and drought, loans that creditors and borrowers alike believed could be repaid comfortably from commodity earnings. Indeed,as in much of the third world, Africa’s borrowing made good sense when interest rates were low and exports were expanding. The loans became albatrosses when interest rates rose while commodity prices plummeted.

Because the African region has the highest dependence on exports of primary products such as coffee, cocoa and copper, it was the hardest hit when world demand fell and prices declined dramatically. The debt of sub-saharan Africa now exceeds its gross national product. The ratio of yearly debt payments to export income in Africa far exceeds thresholds considered dangerous, and in some countries even exceeds 100percent, according to the World Bank’s 1989 debt tables.

Yet the problem is hardly intractable. Its solution was cutlined in the UN Program of Action for African Economic Recovery and Development at a special session of the General Assembly in 1986.

Africans outlined a wide-ranging set of policy reforms.

To support this African determination to reform policies and practices, the international community, and in particular the industrialized countries, agreed to provide additional financial assistance without which, it was universally acknowledged, these reforms were likely to falter or fail.

After tough reappraisal of failed policies, African states embarked on draconian belt-tightening measures that few leaders of industrialized countries would dare to inflict on their peoples.

Many African states have undertaken radical market-oriented reforms. Countries have moved to compress pubblic services, privatize public enterprise and vitalize agricolture. They have revised investment codes to attract foreign capital. No less than 30 states have adopted structural adjustment programs in co-operation with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

It was believed in 1986 that this program would, if fully honored, revive economic growth, transform Africa’s development prospects and enable Africa to play its full and constructive part in the world’s economy. Three years later, the African states point out that the international community has not fully honored its commitments, especially in the one area that is seen as the key to reviving economic growth; net capital flows.

The 1987 Baker plan hardly touched Africa.

The 1988 Toronto agreement of the Group of Seven raised expectations, but as it turns out, has done little to reduce the African stock of debt.

The 1989 Brady plan seems designed principally for middle-income Latin America, where much of the debt (unlike the case in Africa) is owed to commercial rather than official creditors. Meanwhile, Africans plead desperately for improvements of terms and conditions of resource flows.

Hopes for American leadership in the search for solutions were revived when President George Bush announced, just before the Paris summit in july, the intention to reduce or cancel some of the official debt of the poorer African states. Africans hope that this important initiative will not get bogged down in procedural detail.

The situation in Africa demands urgent attention. The continent is continually pressing its impoverished people for greater sacrifices. As President Hosni Mubarak told the General Assembly, the African problem "is no longer one of growth and development, but rather one of survival in the literal sense of the word".

On pragmatic economic grounds, and because the resources and actions required can be provided relatively painlessly, the richer countries should be more forthcoming to the African situation.

By TOM VRAALSEN, Germany.