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Proposals on the role of trade within NEPAD - Challenges and questions
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D. Some challenges and questions
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Will NEPADs proposals for infrastructural projects in Africa be appropriate for the development levels and evolving needs within Africa? Or are they mainly intended to attract foreign investment, and will they, in turn, be shaped by the interests of such international investors?
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Are NEPAD's proposals on liberalisation of capital flows within Africa, without appropriate regulatory and compensatory mechanisms, conducive to the most effective distribution of investment and more balanced and equitable development between countries and regions, and across the continent?
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Are NEPAD's proposals for PPPs a sound means to bring private enterprise into co-operation with the public sector on defined developmental terms? Or are PPPs simply another means for the state in Africa (as elsewhere) to under-write and reinforce the operations of private capital, using public resources ?
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Will regulatory frameworks in NEPAD be designed to reflect and promote economic, social, labour, environmental and other needs specific to African countries, regions and the continent? Or will these regulations accommodate to (or simply adopt) inappropriate and biased 'international' regulations?
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Will the development of agricultural production in Africa serve to increase family and community
food security, and national food sovereignty ? Or will NEPAD's promotion of agricultural exports, on the basis of Africa's so-called "comparative advantage", increase dependence on costly food imports.
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Can NEPAD's focus on greater 'market access' for African exports into the richest economies serve as an effective means for increased output and export earnings? Or will the encouragement of Africa's traditional agricultural exports into established markets simply reinforce Africa's long dependence and vulnerability to continued economic manipulations and political pressures ?
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Will economic diversification and industrial development under NEPAD be fundamentally based on local resources, and be extensively labour-intensive in order to generate employment? Or will it rely largely on external financial resources and be mainly capital intensive, with further attendant external costs, and further pressures on external balances of payments ?
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Does NEPAD provide for strategically conceived trade policies to be utilised as effective instruments and components of industrial strategies? Or does NEPAD subscribe to the neo-liberal theories of liberalised trade, per se, as being a necessary and sufficient 'engine of growth' and providing the 'stimulus of international competition' ?
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Is trade integration within Africa seen within NEPAD as an important means to stimulate local
producers and provide them with larger and guaranteed markets? Or is liberal international access to such African markets - and insupportable competitive pressures on African producers and providers of goods and services - the quid quo pro that NEPAD is offering in return for international aid and investment ?
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In so far as NEPAD supports trade liberalisation and/or preferential trade arrangements to encourage intra-African trade, will this work in equitable and mutually beneficial ways ? Or will these trade measures, without accompanying supportive programmes, operate to the benefit of the stronger economies and companies within Africa, and especially South Africa ?
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Will NEPAD further the longstanding African aspirations towards greater self-reliance and more self-sustaining development within the continent ? Or will NEPAD reinforce the excessive extroversion of much African commercial production through its support for greater 'international competitiveness' and export-led growth, and excessive reliance on external financing?
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Will NEPAD act on its own observations about "deficiencies in the design and application" of the various reciprocal free trade agreements that are being foisted upon Africa, especially by the EU and the US ? Or will NEPAD's explicit endorsement of such unequal agreements be allowed to further reinforce global imbalances through comprehensive 'trade-related' agreements between the strong and the weak ?
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Can NEPAD continue to promote the WTO as a conducive "forum" for negotiation with international
'partners' on Africa's needs, despite all the biased uses and blatant abuses by the majors ? Or can NEPAD be changed to promote the demands by African and other developing countries for reviews and reforms of the one hundred-plus 'implementation issues' in all the WTO agreements, and challenge the WTO itself?
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Will NEPAD give prime emphasis and act practically on its observations about the inequities and
costs of globalisation on the weak, and especially Africa? Or will NEPAD follow its more pervasive beliefs in the "unparalleled opportunities" provided by globalisation, and thus encourage African countries and regions to "integrate rapidly" into the global economy ?
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Is 'the integration' of Africa about 'participating' more effectively in the global economy? Or is 'integration' actually about the opening up of Africa to the reinforced penetration and renewed domination by powerful international economic and political forces over the continent; and is globalisation thus better described as "recolonisation"? And where does NEPAD stand on this ?
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