Focus on NEPAD development plan

On their return from a meeting with some of the world's most powerful countries in Canada this week, African leaders are expected to answer at least one critical question: have they secured the money to get Africa out of its present state of poverty and underdevelopment? Led by South African President Thabo Mbeki, African leaders are seeking a major financial commitment from G-8 members for the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) initiative, an ambitious economic plan to revive the many moribund economies and alleviate the poverty blighting Africa. "[It is] a singular opportunity for developed countries to help break the cycle of African underdevelopment," Mbeki wrote in the New York Times on Monday. On the table is an appeal for an extra US $64 billion to fill an annual resource gap of 12 percent of Africa's gross domestic product in order to achieve a 7 percent annual economic growth rate. Some of this will come from better tax collection and increased domestic savings. But the bulk will have to come from outside the continent. NEPAD argues that Africa needs more debt reduction and aid in the short to medium term, and more private investment in the long term. In return, African governments promise to take significant steps to resolve armed conflicts and develop more democratic and less corrupt forms of government. Supporters of NEPAD have been at pains to highlight the positive features of what is arguably the most significant attempt by Africans to rebuild post-colonial Africa. Promoters of the project say that Africa has acted on the need to negotiate a new relationship with their development partners. Also central to the spirit of NEPAD is the focus on "African ownership and management". In line with this, the plan is explicit about the need for Africans to help themselves. Pragmatically, the initiative deviates from previous upliftment programmes as it places importance on national and regional priorities in the formulation of development plans. The central thrust behind its success, NEPAD says, is that these plans must be prepared through local participation. Some of the goals are the same as those set by the United Nations in several of it global conferences, such as reducing extreme poverty by half by 2015. But the noble sentiment behind NEPAD will need much more than good intentions if it is to move beyond the empty rhetoric of the past and make a new beginning. One of the gripes raised among delegates at a meeting of African scholars in Kenya in April was NEPAD had failed to consult the very people it was designed to help. Addressing this lack of consultation in the drawing up of the plan, political analyst, Yash Tandon said: "Although the document promises to be 'people-oriented', the people have not been consulted. Most civil society organisations first learnt about NEPAD from their northern colleagues. In fact some African governments were alerted to the plan by the western media." Tandon added that after the leading African Heads of Government (those of South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal and Algeria) had discussed NEPAD among themselves, they appeared to have gone first to the Western capitals and the representatives of international private capital before consulting with their own people. In South Africa, Professor Dennis Brutus of Jubilee SA, an anti-debt lobby group, was equally scathing of NEPAD. Protesting at the meeting of the World Economic Forum in Durban earlier this month he said: "We regard NEPAD as a new form of colonisation with the consent of African leaders. The essence of the document is that Africa promises to obey all requests from the West and will submit to their demands, particularly in the area of investment. Africa will be enslaved to satisfy the demands of the West." The reaction so far, from the more radical section of African civil society, has been equally negative. In Bamako, Mali, participants from some 200 social movements, organisations and institutions from 45 African countries met under the aegis of the African Social Forum. Their final declaration read: "The Forum rejected neo-liberal globalisation and further integration of Africa into an unjust system as a basis for its growth and development. "In this context, there was a strong consensus against initiatives such as NEPAD that are inspired by the IMF/WB [International Monetary Fund and World Bank] strategies of Structural Adjustment Programmes, trade liberalisation that continues to subject Africa to an unequal exchange between its exports and its imports, and strictures on governance borrowed from the practices of Western countries and not rooted in the culture and history of the peoples of Africa." It would seem that Mbeki and his supporters have a monumental twin task of getting African civil society to buy into the plan's benefits, and implementing NEPAD. That is made all the more difficult by the HIV/AIDS pandemic ravaging sub-Saharan Africa. On the sidelines of the G-8 gathering, aid agencies voiced concern that fighting HIV/AIDS on the continent had not been sufficiently addressed in the plan. Speaking at the opening of the People's Summit, an alternative to the G-8 Summit, Stephen Lewis, the UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS, criticised NEPAD for its modest references to HIV/AIDS. He said: "How can you talk about the future of sub-Saharan Africa without AIDS at the heart of the analysis? "If the G-8 Summit takes NEPAD seriously, if it wishes to make development more than an 'impossible dream' ... then it will provide a guarantee, year by year, of the monies that Kofi Annan has requested for the Global [AIDS] Fund. In one fell swoop, the entire summit would then be credible." Lewis' observation has joined the critiques of NEPAD that suggest the implication of receiving huge sums of foreign capital could in fact initiate a new set of problems for African countries. Central to NEPAD's philosophy is that Africa has to become more competitive within the global economy by creating the conditions that can attract international investment. Spelling out why it is important for the north to help Africa, the NEPAD document says: "Improvements in the living standards of the marginalised offer massive potential for growth in the entire international economy, through the creation of new markets. "Furthermore, it will bring with it greater stability on a global scale, accompanied by a sense of economic and social well-being." "The imperative of development therefore not only poses a challenge to moral conscience; it is in fact fundamental to the sustainability of the globalisation process," says the NEPAD plan. Anti neo-liberal economists have in large part rejected NEPAD saying that it only encourages the ongoing exploitation of vulnerable African economies. To illustrate this point, NEPAD detractors highlight how basic essential services like drinking water will eventually be under the supervision of international companies. "Whoever is able to bring capital from outside can have control over the distribution of water, and must be able to charge 'cost recovery' price to the water-users. If people cannot pay, then their water pipes must be closed until they are able to pay," Tandon said. NGO activists point out that whether or not foreign capital comes to Africa to provide water to the people, water is a basic human right. Its provision is the government's responsibility that cannot be turned on or off on the basis of the peoples' ability to pay. This would extend to food, adequate housing, electricity, basic education and essential transport. Whether or not the five African leaders leave the remote town of Kananaskis in Canada satisfied with the assurance that the West is committed to seeing a better Africa, the real success is perhaps best judged if African people feel that they have not been given the short end of the stick. For the full NEPAD text