Commentary: NEPAD, Roadmap for African Continent's Prosperity

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, July 13, 2003

Commentary: NEPAD, Roadmap for African Continent's Prosperity

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The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) moved the center stage at the just-concluded second summit of the African Union (AU) held in Maputo, as Africanleaders have reached consensus on further implementing NEPAD to eliminate the poverty and to boost economic development on the continent.

At the closing speech of the summit here, AU Chairman and Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano said the NEPAD program is the driving force for African progress and the vanguard instrumentfor the development of the peoples of Africa.

Thus the African countries need to implement NEPAD with full energy and more efficiency, he added.

Recognizing NEPAD as the first continent-wide program for the development of Africa, Chissano said, "we must continue to find ways and means to mobilize the necessary resources for implementation of this initiative."

NEPAD was born out of collaboration among leaders from South Africa, Nigeria, Algeria and Senegal. It seeks to promote economicrecovery through partnerships with governments and investors in the developed world.

African countries have chosen to work as a group and join efforts to ensure a better economic development for the continent.The NEPAD initiative is the outcome of this new, integrated and holistic strategy which aims at spurring growth and reducing poverty in Africa.

By covering priority sectors such as infrastructure, information and communications technologies, transport, water, agriculture, education and heath, NEPAD, in collaboration with partners such as the Group of Eight (G8), offers a new vision of development in Africa, based on the pledge from African countries to adhere to the values of peace, security, good governance and toimplement effective economic reforms.

The distinguishing feature of NEPAD, unlike earlier initiativessuch as the Lagos Plan of Action and the African Priority Plan foreconomic recovery, is the recognition by African leaders that peace, security, democracy, good governance, the rule of law, respect for human rights and sound economic management are important conditions for sustainable development.

More importantly, through NEPAD, African leaders have accepted not only to assume their responsibility to confront and deal with these issues but also have pledged to learn from each other, work jointly and severally to promote these principles through self assessment and peer review. As a result, it enjoys support from the donor community, as well as the commitment and determination of the highest echelon of the African leadership.

NEPAD also identifies key priority sectors that are very important to the objective of poverty reduction in Africa. These priority areas include bridging the infrastructure gap, harnessingand developing Africa's human capital base through the promotion and financing of health and education projects, attracting substantial public and private capital flows by way of improvements in the political and economic governance systems, improving agriculture and rural development and expanding market access for African exports to developed countries.

The abiding challenge that still faces the continent is to forge strong partnership between the public and private sectors tobuild the necessary capacities and infrastructures to accelerate broad-based economic growth, reduce poverty, and, generally, make progress toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

The NEPAD initiative has succeeded in generating the support ofAfrican leaders and it has elicited the endorsement of the international community as evidence by the support of the Europeancommunity as well as that of the G8, which adopted the African Action Plan at Kananskis, Canada in 2002.

In the past year, the progress and achievements of NEPAD clearly show that for the first time in history, Africa has a unifying socio-economic vision and policy framework that has been developed in Africa, that has been endorsed by all African leadersand is supported by the global community.

NEPAD is an initiative by Africans to emancipate themselves from poverty and build their economy.

One African diplomat said NEPAD is a brilliant idea, and each African people has every reason to support it. It seeks to serve their interest and promote their culture and tradition. It is there for their growth and development.

It is an agenda set by Africans for Africans. Above all, the program is there to take Africa out of the mud.

They have to sell the idea to the United States and Britain andconvince the superpowers that Africa is ready to stand on its own.

The world has given NEPAD a thumbs up. Blair and Bush have alsocommitted their support to Africa's development.

But Africans have to prove to the world that they are serious about their own development. Others can only do so much for them, the rest has to be done by Africans.

This is Africa's turn. Many opportunities are opening up for the continent, and Africans have to make most of them.

One Asian observer says if Africa can overcome the difficulties,in particular regional conflicts it faces and open the way toward a bright future, it will probably become a driving force behind vibrant development of human society in the 21st century.

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