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African heads of government in October 2001 launched the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) in Abuja at a meeting of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). Several African heads of state, lead by President Mbeki of South Africa, presented an earlier plan for the renewal of African development, the New African Initiative, to G8 leaders meeting in Genoa in July 2001. NEPAD is a revision of this Initiative, which in turn brought together several strategies by African leaders to bring global attention to the profound issues of poverty, inequality and development throughout Africa.
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The purpose of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development is to set “an agenda for the renewal of the continent” [47] in order “to eradicate poverty in Africa and to place African countries, both individually and collectively, on a path of sustainable growth and development” [67]. It is a pledge by African heads of state to lead a process to extract the continent from its “exclusion in a globalizing world.” It is “a call for a new relationship of partnership between Africa and the international community, especially the highly industrialized countries, to overcome the development chasm that has widened over the centuries of unequal relations” [8].
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While providing an overarching analysis of issues and challenges in the prospects for Africa’s development, NEPAD sets out a number of initiatives to achieve its very ambitious goals:
- The peace, security, democracy and political governance initiative;
- The economic and corporate governance initiative;
- Bridging the infrastructure gap;
- Human resource development initiative;
- Agriculture;
- The environment initiative;
- Capital flows initiative; and
- The Market access initiative.
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At the Genoa meeting the G8 leaders agreed that the next G8 Summit, to be hosted by Canada in June 2002, would respond to NEPAD’s call for a new partnership based on “the principles of responsibility and ownership” [G8 Genoa Plan for Africa, July 2001] with a concrete G8 Action Plan. Since then, NEPAD has been given increased attention in multilateral processes for Financing for Development, in the preparations for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (“Rio +10”) to be held in Johannesburg at the end of August, and in discussions with African leaders, within the European Union, and during Prime Minister Chrйtien’s trip to Africa in April 2002. Under Canadian leadership, representatives for the G8 countries have been meeting in various African capital cities to elaborate a G8 Action Plan.
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