New Partnership for Africa's Development
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New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) is an economic development programme of the African Union. The NEPAD was adopted at the 37th session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government in July 2001 in Lusaka, Zambia. NEPAD has met with opposition from many African NGOs who see it as a tool for strengthening Western domination over Africa.
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[edit] Origins and function
NEPAD is a merger of two plans for the economic regeneration of Africa: the Millennium Partnership for the African Recovery Programme (MAP), led by President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa in conjunction with Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria; and the OMEGA Plan for Africa developed by President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal. At an extraordinary summit in Sirte, Libya, March 2001, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) agreed that the MAP and OMEGA Plans should be merged. The UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) developed a "Compact for Africa’s Recovery" based on both these plans and on resolutions on Africa adopted by the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000, and submitted a merged document to the Conference of African Ministers of Finance and Ministers of Development and Planning in Algiers, May 2001. In July 2001, the OAU Assembly of Heads of State and Government meeting in Lusaka, Zambia, adopted this document under the name of the New African Initiative (NAI). The leaders of G8 countries endorsed the plan on July 20, 2001. The Heads of State and Government Implementation Committee (HSGIC) for the project finalized the policy framework and named it the New Partnership for Africa's Development on 23 October 2001.
NEPAD is now a program of the African Union (AU), though it has its own secretariat based in South Africa to coordinate and implement its programmes -- reflecting the dominant role of South Africa's president Thabo Mbeki in its creation. Successive AU summits have proposed the greater integration of NEPAD into the AU's structures and processes.
NEPAD’s four primary objectives are to eradicate poverty, promote sustainable growth and development, integrate Africa in the world economy, and accelerate the empowerment of women. It is based on underlying principles of a commitment to good governance, democracy, human rights and conflict resolution; and the recognition that maintenance of these standards is fundamental to the creation of an environment conducive to investment and long-term economic growth. NEPAD seeks to attract increased investment, capital flows and funding, providing an African-owned framework for development as the foundation for partnership at regional and international levels.
In July 2002, the Durban AU summit supplemented NEPAD with a Declaration on Democracy, Political, Economic and Corporate Governance. According to the Declaration, states participating in NEPAD ‘believe in just, honest, transparent, accountable and participatory government and probity in public life’. Accordingly, they ‘undertake to work with renewed determination to enforce’, among other things, the rule of law; the equality of all citizens before the law; individual and collective freedoms; the right to participate in free, credible and democratic political processes; and adherence to the separation of powers, including protection for the independence of the judiciary and the effectiveness of parliaments.
The Declaration on Democracy, Political, Economic and Corporate Governance also committed participating states to establish an African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) to promote adherence to and fulfilment of its commitments. The Durban summit adopted a document setting out the stages of peer review and the principles by which the APRM should operate. The APRM should increase accountability among aid recipients and offer “practical advice to countries struggling with governance shortcomings” (Deegan 365).
[edit] Structures
The HSGIC to which the NEPAD secretariat reports comprises three states for each region of the African Union, with President Obasanjo (Nigeria) as elected chair, and Presidents Bouteflika (Algeria) and Wade (Senegal) as deputy chairmen. The HSGIC meets several times a year and reports to the AU Assembly of Heads of State and Government.
There is also a steering committee, comprising 20 AU member states, to oversee projects and program development.
The NEPAD Secretariat is based in Midrand, South Africa, and is headed by a Mozambican CEO, Firmino Mucavele.
[edit] Meetings
There have been numerous conferences focusing on the role of NEPAD in Africa. For example, during 22-23 October 2004, a NEPAD Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue took place at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa. The event was a presentation of a three year review of NEPAD's progress since its formation, and an opportunity for stakeholders from the private sector, civil society, government and international organisations to dialogue on the way forward.
[edit] Programs
NEPAD's concrete programs focus largely on agriculture, human resources development (especially in health, education, science and technology), infrastructure, market access and intra-African trade and preservation of the environment.
NEPAD has convened several meetings relating to agriculture and food security, and adopted a Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP).
NEPAD has embarked upon an "e-schools program", in partnership with several large IT companies to equip all 600,000 primary and secondary schools in Africa with IT equipment and internet access within 10 years. See NEPAD E-School program
[edit] Criticism of NEPAD
NEPAD has met with criticism and opposition from much of civil society in Africa and elsewhere in the world.
Critics argue that NEPAD is structured around the belief that investment from the North is essential to the development of Africa, and resent that little popular consultation was undertaken in the formulation of NEPAD. As such, the so-called partnership is often criticised for being an agreement among political and economic elites of the North, whether African or European. Accordingly, the NEPAD acronym has often by critics been referred to as "new partnership for Africa’s domination or destruction", or pronounced humorously as "knee-pad" to depict Africa’s preparedness to stay longer on its knees while pleading for aid.
In 2002, members of some forty African social movements, trade unions, youth and women's organizations, NGOs, religious organizations and others endorsed the African Civil Society Declaration on NEPAD, rejecting NEPAD.
The views expressed in the declaration included the following:
- that NEPAD was mainly concerned with raising external financial resources, constituting a top-down program relying on foreign governments, African elites and multinational corporations rather than starting from the people of Africa and being owned by the people of Africa.
- that NEPAD builds on a legacy of neoliberal structural adjustment programmes which have undermined democracy and deepened the crisis in Africa,
- that promises of good governance and democracy are intended only to satisfy foreign donors,
- that references to human rights and AIDS are too few and rhetorical, to be of real importance
- that NEPAD supports privatization programmes which is inimical to African people's rightful ownership of African resources,
- that it will mobilise African natural resources for foreign exploitation and plunder,
- that NEPAD does not (as they believe it should) support total cancellation of external debts,
- they reject the export-led growth model on which Nepad rests as harmful for Africa,
- that NEPAD by promoting deeper integration into the global economic system serves the interests of the rich.
Similar views were endorsed by African scholars and activist intellectuals in the 2002 Accra Declaration on Africa's Development Challenges.
[edit] See also
[edit] Bibliography
- "Pan-Africa: The NEPAD formula" by Sarah Coleman, World Press Review July 2002 v49 i7 p29(1)
- "Bring Africa out of the margins", The Christian Science Monitor July 5, 2002 p10
- The African Union, NEPAD, and Human Rights: The Missing Agenda. Human Rights Quarterly - Volume 26, Number 4, November 2004, pp. 983-1027 - Article
- "Economic Policy and Conflict in Africa" in Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, Vol.2, No.1, 2004; pp.6-20
- "Nepad" analysis for the Z Sustainer program, June 20, 2002 [1]
- African Civil Society Declaration on NEPAD African Civil Society Declaration on NEPAD, a declaration by some 40 African NGO's denouncing NEPAD, July 2002.
- [http://www.arts.cornell.edu/poverty/kanbur/POVNEPAD.pdf The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD): An Initial Commentary
by Ravi Kanbur, Cornell University]
[edit] External links
- NEPAD official website
- African Civil Society Declaration on NEPAD African Civil Society Declaration on NEPAD, a declaration by some 40 African NGO's denouncing NEPAD, July 2002.
- Sustainability Watch NGO site with a compilation of civil society responses to NEPAD.
- Accra Declaration Declaration on Africa's Development Challenges. Adopted at end of Joint CODESRIA- TWN-AFRICA Conference on Africa's Development Challenges in the Millennium, Accra 23-26 April, 2002.
- University of Iowa Center for International Finance and Development What is NEPAD? A Faq on Nepad by an academic institution.
