By Wendy Lubetkin
Washington File Correspondent

Geneva -- Participants from 12 African countries will gather in Nairobi, Kenya, to improve the dialogue between developing country business leaders and government trade officials and thus revive World Trade Organization (WTO) global trade negotiations.

The Nairobi March 30-31 "Regional Conference on Business for Development" is the first in a series of conferences planned for different regions over the coming year by the International Trade Center (ITC). The conferences, which will bring together developing country business leaders and trade negotiators, have received funding from several donor governments, including $500,000 from the United States.

The WTO negotiations, called the Doha Development Agenda, collapsed at the September 2003 ministers' meeting in Cancun, Mexico. ITC Executive Director J. Denis BĂ©lisle said eventual success for the negotiations "will depend to a large degree on the quality of collaboration between national trade negotiators and the business community."

In the developing world, the voice of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) on trade issues often comes through "loudly and articulately," he said, but the views of the business community are not as easily heard.

After years of staying aloof from trade negotiations, businesses in the developing world now are clamoring to be consulted, according to Ramamurti Badrinath, director of trade support services at ITC.

"The business community is saying we would like to be included," he said. "And the governments are saying, 'We would like to hear from business, but business doesn't know how to talk to us.'"

Private and public sectors in the developed world have long-established channels of exchange on issues related to trade negotiations, but in developing countries such channels often do not exist and the practice of lobbying is almost unknown.

The International Trade Center (ITC) is a joint U.N.-WTO agency that supports developing and transitional economies. The United Nations and WTO work primarily with governments, but ITC often works directly with small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in the developing world.

Smaller businesses form the backbone of the economy in many developing countries, according to BĂ©lisle, but many SMEs lack experience in foreign trade and have not learned to organize into effective advocacy groups. Although they will be among the most affected by the outcome of a global trade agreement, they often feel left out of the negotiating process, he said.

"Business advocacy for trade talks is a must to ensure that governments do not agree to trade rules under which private firms cannot do business," BĂ©lisle said. "This is true in both the North and the South, but in the South business and government rarely work together on positions for trade talks."

"The countries of the North are listening to their private sectors, and, not only that, they bring them on board for the negotiations," BĂ©lisle told a group of prospective participants in the Nairobi meeting. "There is no reason not to do this in the South."

"The private sector can be a key player for development in your countries, but it has to speak up first," he said.