AJFNS Volume 2 No. 2 July 2002
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Everybody
is talking about NEPAD. Some professionals, particularly economists
and development experts, have taken time to analyze what exactly is
covered in this program. Most of us, however, have only the press view
of it, and not even in a holistic way. We are press-fed with bits and
pieces of what it is all about, as we read both positive and negative
commentaries about the initiative. I took the liberty to seek a simple
explanation of what NEPAD is all about and, of course, I knew where
to go. Below is what a leading African economist and management expert,
a brilliant son of the soil with profound experience in African capacity
building issues had to say. - Editor-in-Chief |
African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) countries: Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo-Brazzaville, Congo-Kinshasa, Côte d'Ivoire, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tomé and Principé, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD)
NEPAD as an initiative can be divided into three main parts: the core elements, the opportunities that NEPAD offers for Africa's development, and the challenges facing successful implementation of the initiative.
NEPAD is a call for a new partnership between Africa and the international community, based on mutual respect. It is a regional initiative with poverty reduction as its main objective. It is an African strategy for achieving sustainable development in the 21st century. It is premised on African governments committing themselves to good governance, democracy and human rights, while endeavouring to prevent and resolve situations of conflict and instability on the Continent.
As a regional initiative, NEPAD gives one voice to Africa. The voice is credible because it represents and demonstrates Africa's political will to do things differently. Such a will, coupled with the will of the people is fronted and orchestrated by democratically elected Heads of State and Government.
NEPAD offers a common and credible voice regionally and globally, and puts forward a common framework for poverty reduction and development. It provides a mechanism for exerting peer pressure for good governance, democracy and the observance of human rights, and provides an operational framework for enforcing discipline, commitment to development and efficient use of resources.
Wars, corruption, undemocratic government, violation of human rights, non-observance of the rule of law and poor economic management are elements that can potentially undermine the initiative, as indeed has been the case with past initiatives.
Challenges
Cost is a factor here, and a major one indeed. NEPAD's Secretariat has neither fully estimated the cost of implementing the initiative nor determined the timeframe over which it will be implemented. If, however, the main goal is to achieve the millennium goal of halving extreme poverty in Africa by 2015, starting from the present year (2002), NEPAD will have to be implemented consistently over the period 2002-2015, which comes close to one and a half decades. Yet, we are still at the talking stage. Further, it has been projected that its resource requirements may come close to US$64 billion per annum, an amount that clearly cannot be raised locally on the Continent.
All this suggests that Africa will need to raise its growth rate from its current level of about 3% per annum to about 7% projected by NEPAD over the 14-year period. This clearly is very ambitious. The investment requirement for this growth to occur translates into an increase in domestic savings close to 12% of the Continent's Gross Domestic Product. Desirably, an increase in the in-flow of official development assistance will have to be stepped up considerably. If followed through, it could generate about US$100 billion in official development assistance, which implies potentially bright prospects for the financing of NEPAD.
With the real value of official development assistance to sub-Saharan Africa declining from US$20 billion in 1999 to about US$13 billion in 2001, G-8 countries' share of official development assistance in gross national product ranging between 0.01% and 0.33%, and the Strategic Partnership for Africa mobilizing only US$15 billion in support of economic reforms in Africa since its launch in 1987, considerably more effort will be needed to mobilize resources to effectively finance the NEPAD initiative. Thus, the resource mobilization challenge is enormous.
NEPAD also faces some challenges on the program side. While considerable efforts have been made to concretize the program of action in the various sectors in which the initiative will be intervening, more articulation is required in some other crucial areas. An operational framework is needed to guide the prioritization of NEPAD programs and properly establish its niche or comparative advantage in specific areas in which it is proposing programs. Three criteria are vital for assessing NEPAD's comparative advantage: Is the program proposed by NEPAD particularly suited for intervention by a regional organization? Does the proposed program require the intervention of a regional organization that is rooted in democratic principles and values? Are there existing regional organizations that are already implementing the proposed program reasonably well?
When subjected to the foregoing criteria/questions, the initiative comes off very strongly in interventions to strengthen peace and security, democracy and political governance, and the production of selected regional public goods. On economic and corporate governance as well as sectoral priorities, there is need for NEPAD to reflect once again on the extent of its comparative advantage.
There are very strong and effective regional organizations that are dealing with capacity building (for example ACBF), applied policy research at the regional level, issues relating to public sector reform, studies and activities relating to integration (Policy Analysis Support Unit of OAU/AU), among others. This equally applies to intervention at the level of sectoral priorities put forward by NEPAD.
Nonetheless, NEPAD is a good initiative. It is a critical intervention if Africa is to succeed in effectively reducing poverty and achieving sustainable growth in the first two decades of the new millennium. It is a strong beacon of hope for Africa, if the Continent is to achieve some of the goals set by the United Nations in its millennium declaration adopted in September 2000 by 147 Heads of State and Government.
However, the programs put forward by the initiative should be properly prioritized to allow efficient use of resources; NEPAD must not duplicate or undermine existing institutions, which have attestable comparative advantages in some of the areas in which it has proposed intervention; and NEPAD should focus on programs in which it has undisputable comparative advantage as a regional institution with special authority and globally recognized and respected legitimacy.
NEPAD's natural
niche is in policies and programs that apply in the regional sphere, and those
in other domains for which having a united African voice is particularly important,
for example Food Security, Health, Agriculture, and Trade.
Dr. Genevesi Ogiogio,
Manager, Knowledge Management and Program Support, ACBF. Email: g.ogiogio@acbf-pact.org