From Africa Recovery, Vol.15 #4, December 2001, page 10

Momentum builds for African plan

Donors pledge support, as African leaders fine-tune "New Partnership"

By Ernest Harsch

By energetically promoting their new plan for the African continent's peace and development, Africans are determined "to sing their own songs and dance to their own tune," President Thabo Mbeki told a special session of South Africa's parliament. Introducing the plan -- the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) -- for public discussion on 31 October, he highlighted its many ambitious goals. Not least, these include forging a closer, more open relationship between African governments and their peoples, while simultaneously developing "a new partnership with the rest of the world on the basis of what we, as Africans, have determined is the correct route to our own development."

Neither effort will be easy, Mr. Mbeki acknowledged. Sectors of Africa's elites may resist calls for greater accountability and for utilizing Africa's enormous wealth for the betterment of ordinary citizens, especially the poor. And, quoting the NEPAD programme, he observed that Africa's links with the highly industrialized countries are based on a "development chasm that has widened over centuries of unequal relations." Heavy foreign debt burdens, declining levels of official development assistance, low prices for Africa's main export commodities and limited access to the markets of the industrialized countries are all serious external constraints that NEPAD acknowledges may hamper Africa's ability to fully implement its plan.

Photo: ©UNIDO

The initial response by leaders in key industrial countries has been encouraging, however. On 3 December, for example, some 400 African and Asian delegates gathered in Tokyo to prepare for the third Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD), scheduled for 2003, a decade after the first Japanese-led effort to build Asian solidarity with Africa's development efforts. Now, with Africa's adoption of the NEPAD, the participants also turned their attention to examining ways the TICAD process can best support the new African programme.

"The world of the 21st century will know stability and prosperity only if Africa's problems are solved," Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi declared at the opening. President Alpha Oumar Konaré of Mali assured him that Africa is fully capable of "accelerating its march toward integration and development." He urged "our partners to join this movement." Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka welcomed NEPAD and pledged continued assistance from Japan, stressing that aid for Africa is especially important now, "at a time when the world economy is slowing down."

'A fairer distribution'

Leaders in Brussels, Ottawa, London and other donor capitals, as well as top officials of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, have been similarly positive. Baroness Amos, parliamentary under-secretary of state in the UK's Foreign Office, focused extensively on NEPAD in a 17 November address. "As Africa puts its house in order," she said, "NEPAD asks that others should play their part by improving the terms on which Africa engages with the global economy. The African leaders in NEPAD are not afraid of globalization. But they want a fairer distribution of its benefits. This means access to markets, better terms of trade, and help to increase resource flows to Africa, both public and private."

The UN system also has welcomed NEPAD, Mr. K.Y. Amoako, executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, told Africa Recovery. "So the question now is how do we use NEPAD as the framework around which the UN is going to work" in Africa. Already, the UN Administrative Committee on Coordination -- which groups the heads of all UN agencies -- has held preliminary discussions to explore the issue.

To help fund Africa's development efforts, the NEPAD calls not only for greater and more effective use of the continent's own financial resources, but also more development assistance and debt reduction. In consultation with the Group of Eight industrialized countries, African leaders have agreed to raise issues of public financing at the March 2002 UN conference on "financing for development" in Monterrey, Mexico (see article "Can the financing gap be closed?").

In January, however, a separate NEPAD financing conference is to be held in Dakar, Senegal, devoted specifically to the potential contribution of private foreign investment. "We would like the private sector to play in Africa the same role that it played in the development of Europe, the United States and Japan," declares Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade.

Change in name, not substance

NEPAD had its origins in two earlier African initiatives, the Millennium Partnership for the African Recovery Programme, developed at the beginning of 2001 by the presidents of South Africa, Nigeria and Algeria, and the Omega Plan, released around the same time by President Wade (see Africa Recovery, June 2001). Then, at the July summit meeting of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), these two programmes were merged into the New African Initiative and formally adopted as Africa's common development strategy. At the same summit, African leaders voted to transform the OAU into the new African Union over the next year, thereby seeking to give the continent a more integrated political and economic vision (see Africa Recovery, October 2001).

But more work remained to be done. On 23 October, nine African heads of state or government, along with top officials of six other African countries -- known as the "implementation committee" -- met in Abuja, Nigeria, to put the final touches on their basic framework document. This included some editing of the text, along with a change in name from the New African Initiative to NEPAD.

According to Mr. Wiseman Nkuhlu, an economic adviser to President Mbeki and head of South Africa's NEPAD committee, only the name changed, not the "substance." (The full text of the final version of NEPAD can be found on the Web at: <www.dfa.gov.za/events/nepad.htm>.)

Accountability and peace

For NEPAD to succeed, Mr. Nkuhlu stressed, Africa must be able to ensure the political conditions necessary for development to blossom. "We shall deal with all issues such as elections, independence of the judiciary, human rights and the general issue of democracy."

This echoed some of the main themes highlighted at the Abuja meeting. President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, who chairs the NEPAD implementation committee, argued that African leaders could no longer remain silent about the shortcomings or abuses of other African leaders. "The old complaint of undue interference in internal affairs has faded away in contemporary Africa," he noted. "We must talk more and consult more among ourselves. We must be prepared to be criticized constructively by fellow African leaders."

Similarly, President Mbeki told the South African parliament: "We must entrench a human rights culture.... We have to deal with corruption and be accountable to one another for all our actions."

The Abuja meeting decided that a "peer review mechanism" should be established, along with a code of conduct for good political and economic governance, to help keep tabs on the performance of Africa's leaders. Such a review process, Mr. Mbeki insists, should include measures to "ensure compliance," while existing institutions like the African Commission on Human and People's Rights can play an important monitoring role. In addition, once the African Union gets off the ground next year, it will create a new African Court of Justice, which Mr. Mbeki hopes will be able to take up "the issue of good governance."

In a parallel direction, the Abuja meeting also emphasized the need for Africans to better resolve the many armed conflicts that have been plaguing the continent. It established a special sub-committee on "peace and security," chaired by South Africa, with Algeria, Gabon, Mali and Mauritius as members. It will examine ways to strengthen the ability of African countries to work together to prevent and resolve conflicts.

Ending conflict is vital for Africa's development, South African Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota pointed out in a speech on NEPAD in late October. "Until peace is secured in Africa," he said, "military expenditures will continue to take a large slice out of the continent's public spending. Securing peace will thus release resources to be redeployed to social needs."

Setting priorities

The New Partnership covers considerable ground, from the fight against poverty and the development of agriculture and industry, to regional economic integration, protection of the environment and the promotion of peace, democracy and human rights. While taking a holistic approach to Africa's development and realizing that action will be needed in many different areas, the leaders gathered in Abuja decided to set up "task teams" to identify specific projects and implementation strategies in five priority areas:

• capacity building for peace and security
• economic and corporate governance
• infrastructure and information and communications technology
• central bank and financial standards
• agriculture and market access.

Individual African presidents will take a direct role in helping to guide the work on specific issues. For example, President Wade will focus on the development of Africa's infrastructure -- roads, railways, ports, bridges, dams and irrigation. In early December, he called on volunteer African experts to help survey the state of Africa's infrastructure facilities and identify ways to strengthen and coordinate them so as to expedite greater trade, investment and other interactions among African countries.

President Konaré will chair the "e-Africa Commission," one of the very first NEPAD initiatives, which will develop continent-wide strategies and projects to promote information and communications technology. One of those is the "e-schools" project, to train young people in basic computer skills to further advance their education, acquire jobs or launch self-employed businesses or professions.

"The challenge before us is not just about technology," South African Minister of Communications Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri said in mid-November, while explaining the work of the e-Africa Commission. "It is about creating an African continent, about African history, geography and culture. It is about African languages and about science in an African continent. That is the spirit of NEPAD."

Private investment: Africa's 'missing link' The New Partnership for Africa's Development recognizes the role that private capital can play in meeting Africa's financing needs, Botswana's President Festus Mogae observed at a conference in his country's capital, Gaborone. Called by the Global Coalition for Africa (GCA), an international forum for debating critical African issues, the 25-26 October meeting focused on the potential contributions of the private sector to the continent's development process. Acquiring more private investment is neither an easy, "all gain and no pain" option, nor is it a panacea, President Mogae acknowledged. But it can provide Africa with access to new capital, technologies, and marketing and management skills. "The private sector," South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma argued, should look beyond the negative images of Africa and see it as "a place to do business." In many ways, the private sector is Africa's "missing link," Ms. Eveline Herfkens, minister of development cooperation for the Netherlands, commented. However important its role may become, she added, the business community should practice "social responsibility and corporate citizenship" by paying taxes, supporting competition and refusing to engage in corruption.

NEPAD: Africa must pool its resources The following excerpt is from a section of the New Partnership for Africa's Development dealing with regional approaches to development: Most African countries are small, both in terms of population and per capita incomes. As a consequence of limited markets, they do not offer attractive returns to potential investors, while progress in diversifying production and exports is retarded. This limits investment in essential infrastructure that depends on economies of scale for viability. These economic conditions point to the need for African countries to pool their resources and enhance regional development and economic integration on the continent, in order to improve international competitiveness. The five sub-regional economic groupings of the continent must, therefore, be strengthened. The New Partnership for Africa's Development focuses on the provision of essential regional public goods (such as transport, energy, water, ICT [information and communications technology], disease eradication, environmental preservation, and provision of regional research capacity), as well as the promotion of intra-African trade and investments. The focus will be on rationalizing the institutional framework for economic integration, by identifying common projects compatible with integrated country and regional development programmes, and on the harmonization of economic and investment policies and practices. There needs to be coordination of national sector policies and effective monitoring of regional decisions.

This article may be freely reproduced, with attribution to "Africa Recovery, United Nations".
Permission to use photographs must be obtained from the copyright holder, as credited.
We would appreciate receiving a copy of any article reproduced.

Africa Recovery
Room S-931
United Nations
New York, NY 10017 USA

Tel: (212) 963-6857
Fax: (212) 963-4556
Email: africa_recovery@un.org

Website: www.africarecovery.org
Contact us by email: africa_recovery@un.org