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| The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) - An Initial Commentary - Ravi Kanbur |
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| 1. Introduction |
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The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) was born on October 23,
2001, in Abuja, Nigeria. The Implementation Committee of Heads of State,
chaired by President Obasanjo of Nigeria, adopted the revised NEPAD document
(October 2001 edition) as the original text "embodying the philosophy,
priorities and implementation modalities of the Initiative." The name of the
initiative, hitherto called the New African Initiative (NAI) was changed to
NEPAD.
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NEPAD will rapidly be given an institutional structure and resources, with a
secretariat located in Pretoria, South Africa. According to the communiquР№
released after the inaugural meeting of the Implementation Committee,
preparations are under way to develop specific programs and projects, and to
develop proposals for a conference on financing NEPAD, to be held in Dakar,
Senegal, in January 2002.
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This commentary attempts to advance the discussion on NEPAD by proposing a
framework in which such regional initiatives might be assessed, with the twin
guiding principles of
- comparative advantage
- poverty reduction.
That the NEPAD is a regional initiative, and that its objective is poverty
reduction, is made abundantly clear in the opening line of the NEPAD document:
"This new African initiative is a pledge by African leaders, based on a
common vision and a firm and shared conviction, that they have a pressing duty
to eradicate poverty and to place their countries, both individually and
collectively, on a path of sustainable growth and development, and at the
same time to participate actively in the world economy and body politic." It
is hoped that the framework presented here will be useful as NEPAD is refined
through debate and discussion, and through the lessons of implementation.
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The outline of the rest of this paper is as follows.
Section 2 contains a rapid overview of the key elements of NEPAD to give a
flavor of the nature of the initiative.
Section 3 then presents an initial
commentary, highlighting the main strengths of NEPAD and the challenges it
faces in the way it has been conceptualized.
Section 4 offers a framework
for assessing NEPAD in terms of the twin guiding principles and their
operation in four domains of policy - global, regional, national and local.
Section 5 applies this framework in illustrative manner to some of the actions
proposed under NEPAD.
Section 6 concludes the commentary.
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