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| Regional Stakeholders Consultation on New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD)
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| 5. Commentaries on NEPAD: |
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During this Consultation CSOs recognized the new political will and vision of African leaders that is apparent from the launching of NEPAD. African leaders were commended for taking the initiative aimed at African renewal with an agenda for poverty eradication.
CSOs share the vision for African renewal and express their commitment to contribute to this process. Consistent with the spirit of the African Charter on Popular Participation in Development and Transformation and the Abuja Treaty establishing the African Economic Community as well as the Constitutive Act of the African Union CSOs committed to engage with other social economic partners in the NEPAD process.
Recalling that the New partnership for Africa will only be successful if it is owned by the African peoples united in their diversity, CSOs critically reviewed the current NEPAD document with the intention of finding ways of contributing to its content, popularizing it and mobilizing support for it.
The current analysis draws attention to the following:
- While the document indicates that the analysis is African, there are concerns regarding the process and the framework. The vision is built on selling Africa to the outside. There is a lack of internal strategy. In this regard the building up of NEPAD should have first been subjected to stakeholder consultations at the national, sub-regional and regional levels prior to engaging with the outside world. This would have provided the necessary broader African political consensus.
Thus for NEPAD to have the full ownership of the African peoples it should be more rigorously subjected to stakeholder consultations at the national, sub-regional and regional levels to provide for necessary broader African political consensus in which all stakeholders should do their best to work towards finding their role in addressing the challenges.
- NEPAD should be built on the issues and principles of the Lagos Plan of Action/Final Act of Lagos, the African Alternative Framework to Structural Adjustment Programmes and the African Charter on Popular Participation (Arusha). These will always constitute the solid foundations and therefore building blocks of African renewal process.
- There are clear tensions in the NEPAD document that will need to be resolved.
Examples include:
- while NEPAD recognizes the limitations of Official Development Assistance (ODA) from the developed countries, a significant part of NEPAD financing targets ODA.
- While recognizing the constraints on market access, NEPAD does not address the underlying mechanisms within the global trading system which prevent Africa from getting the full benefits of participating in the global economy. NEPAD should, for example examine the impact of WTO rules and therefore strategise on how Africa should engage. The relationship between regional integration and globalisation are not articulated as would be expected.
- The analysis of the historical impoverishment of the continent in the NEPAD document highlights social economic and political strategies that have hampered Africa’s development. Yet the development strategies proposed are based on the same principle and instruments (current neo-liberal framework and institutions).
- In general, while the analysis of the underlying conditions contributing to the continent’s current condition of poverty might be correct, the prescriptions are actually totally wrong because they do not address the underlying causes in the first place.
- The financing of the NEPAD activities is not articulated. The focus and attention paid to the G8 as a possible source of finance may be appropriate but not necessarily warranted. It does not indicate a renewal process that should reduce external vulnerability of the continent. In any case, credibility with the G8 is dependent on NEPAD’s local credibility. NEPAD must be credible to the African people first before it is sold to the outside world. So far a broader African consensus on NEPAD has not yet been achieved.
Equally, attention paid to the external private sector is bound to undermine the potential to develop the African private sector, especially the development of the informal sector, as a basis for long term African development. The external attention makes Africa an arena for the extension of the liberalization philosophy. NEPAD may end up as an instrument of maintaining poverty on the continent.
- NEPAD takes on far too much an economistic approach at the expense of the social and cultural aspects of African development. The earlier leaders of the African continent recognized the significance of paying attention to African cultural and social development.
- NEPAD should secure integration of Africa in the global economy on Africa’s terms and not integrate it on the basis and context which we know already marginalizes it. In this regard, NEPAD needs to secure genuine rather than satellite investments by foreign investors. It will be important also to secure that African resources are not owned by foreigners since this raises the risk of Africans being marginalized on their own soil.
Furthermore, the relationship between Africa and existing institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF that has actually played a role in Africa’s marginalisation should be reshaped.
- So far it would seem that NEPAD is outside the African Union orbit; dictating the AU and not the other way round. NEPAD is a project of the AU and accordingly the AU institutions and structures should be geared to servicing the NEPAD agenda including providing space for African civil society to engage the different levels of the AU on NEPAD. This way, Africa will stop the marginalisation trend through speaking with one voice (the State and CSOs).
- There are many serious gaps in NEPAD. These include treatment of gender, assessment of the needs of the vulnerable groups and what to do about it, and Africa’s industrialization strategies to name a few.
- In terms of content there is an objective limitation to NEPAD. The commitments of the African Heads of State to NEPAD seems to be torn between those who can provide funds and their own people. For this, there are contradictions that need to be dealt with. CSOs will need to openly express themselves regarding what they agree on and what they do not agree on. It is not just the role of the CSOs to disseminate information on NEPAD in the first place. The leaders have a role to do so also.
- Debt is not dealt with in a satisfactory way. NEPAD should recognize the limitations of current debt relief initiatives and go further to discuss Debt cancellation and define the limit on the repayment on Government budgets.
- NEPAD takes on far too much an economistic approach at the expense of the social and cultural aspects of African development. The earlier leaders of this continent recognized the significance of paying attention to African cultural and social development. NEPAD should do the same.
- African CSOs will define their roles in NEPAD beyond their expected role of disseminating information and popularising the Initiative. This role will include further analysis which might include basic issues such as how Africa will secure genuine rather than satellite investments by foreign investors and how to safeguard that African resources are not owned by foreigners.
- It is going to be essential that structures for CSO involvement are explicit and accessible. This will secure that African CSO frustrations with NEPAD will not find expression in protests on the streets.
- NEPAD should make certain demands that will improve its position in the global arena. These include aspects of global governance that should enhance its negotiating power.
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