The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) has gone by many names. NEPAD is typically depicted by architects and foremost proponents as an attempt to address Africa's vast development challenges. Some have even called it Africa's 'Marshall Plan". More others see it as a development strategy and a programme of the African Union (AU).
Critics on the other hand depict NEPAD as a 'neo-liberal' project, clearly contrary to the views of its supporters who see NEPAD as a revolutionary plan. Critics have even called NEPAD the 'Africanisation of GEAR'. Whatever name and epithet one chooses, NEPAD has clearly generated a great deal of debate.
As a development plan, NEPAD sees a dialectical relationship between politics and economics. It explicitly makes a link between development, peace, security, governance and democracy. It has been taken seriously by supporters and critics alike NEPAD and it seems to have two clear rationales. One the one hand it wishes to inculcate into African politics a culture of democracy, accountability, and 'good' governance. On the other hand it seeks to a `new', enhanced partnership with the countries of the industrialised North so as to involve them in efforts to underwrite such new African initiatives through debt relief, increases in levels of official development assistance, infrastructural development, and direct foreign investment. Thus, NEPAD is based on a trade-off: in exchange for African leaders holding each other accountable, the industrialised powers of the world would recommit themselves to Africa's development.
In order to gain a proper understanding of what NEPAD is, we have to ask the question: what prompted NEPAD? From whence does NEPAD come? NEPAD is in a real sense quite visionary. It seeks to bring about a paradigm shift in both Africa's international relations and intra-African politics. NEPAD was triggered by the post-Cold War reality of power imbalances between Africa and the northern industrialised countries. It is trying to react to western military and political disengagement from the continent, and outside powers shirking in their historical obligations toward the continent. NEPAD is also an attempt to change around negative perceptions of Africa. If the outside world were to respond positively and constructively to NEPAD, their re-engagement of the continent would help to arrest growing poverty and inequality on the continent, and assist in transforming the political, economic and social landscapes in Africa.
Even before assuming the position of president, Thabo Mbeki made plain his determination to tackle Afro-pessimism in the quarters of the developed world. He wanted to shun the image amongst western observers, governments and even investors that Africa was a continent inhabited mainly by a bunch of kleptocratic regimes that are typically dictatorial, with a strong penchant for violating human rights and democracy.
But NEPAD is not only attempt to turn around Africa's image abroad. NEPAD is also targeting African constituencies, most notably African governing elites. NEPAD's hope is that Africans should break with the culture and attitude of victimisation. It sees itself as pursuing a very `mature' approach by breaking with a perceived tendency of blaming the outside world for all of Africa's ills. It hopes to do so by inculcating into African politics a culture of `taking responsibility' for Africa's own mistakes, and by becoming more self-critical of African political development. The view about the west in Africa in turn was that of a club of powerful white governments who are racist towards Africa, and who viewed Africa as having lost its strategic significance after the Cold War. Such governments gradually shirked in their economic and political obligations towards the continent as they saw little point in sending their troops to far-off countries in the 'Dark Continent' of which they knew little about and cared even less.
There was a dialogue of the deaf between these two blocs. Leaders and pundits on both sides criticised one another and talked pass each other. It's as if no one really listened.
Just as Mbeki set out to become the president of redress at home, so he set out to introduce the politics restoration and pragmatic justice globally. This he did especially with regard to African-Western relations, and North-South ties. To this end, Mbeki initiated `a new Agenda for Africa'. Such an agenda could only come about through the building of new bridges between Africa and the outside world. For Mbeki, Africa and the industrialised countries had to be locked into a new and genuine partnership. Africa's states had to become more democratically accountable while northern states had to recommit themselves to participating in Africa's vast development challenges. The best way to extract commitments from both sides was to lock these opposing sides into a new pact; a new deal of sorts. Such a deal had to be based on `genuine' partnership that would stress mutual responsibilities and mutual commitments on politics, democracy and socio-economic issues that would map out Africa's future. Of course the question arises whether in fact there could be 'genuine' partnership between unequals; whether western and other industrialised powers would really be willing to take Africa seriously and view it as a strategic partner that matters?
NEPAD is a bold and ambitious political project. It seeks to redefine and alter power relations between one of the world's poorest continent's - Africa - and the world most powerful and dominant actors - the industrialized North.
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