African leaders to discuss NEPAD in Abuja

African heads of state are due to meet on Sunday in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, to discuss key aspects of a continental development initiative adopted early this year, officials said.

According to information released on Thursday by the Nigerian office of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), up to 20 African leaders - members of NEPAD's implementation committee - are expected to attend the meeting, to be chaired by Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo.

They include South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki, current chairman of the African Union (AU), and other prime movers of the development initiative: Senegal’s Abdoulaye Wade, Algeria’s Abdoulaziz Bouteflika and AU Secretary-General
Amara Essy.

"The meeting will mainly review progress under NEPAD since the committee met last in Durban, South Africa and also examine the implications of the recent adoption of NEPAD by the United Nations General Assembly as an integral part of the UN system," James Atuse, NEPAD secretariat spokesman, told reporters.

The meeting's agenda also includes discussions on the implementation of a peer review mechanism to be used to monitor good governance in the various African states.

The Abuja meeting will use as a working document the conclusions of last week’s annual conference of African ministers of finance and economic development on ways of effectively implementing NEPAD programmes. That meeting was held in Johannesburg, South Africa,

Under the NEPAD initiative, African countries are expected, through good governance, to provide conditions favourable to the injection of massive foreign investment to spur rapid development on the world’s poorest continent.

At June's meeting of the Group of Eight (G8) in Canada, industrialised nations pledged to support NEPAD through the injection of US $6 billion in investment funds. This was far short of the US $60 billion originally envisaged by African leaders.