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The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) - An Initial Commentary - Ravi Kanbur


5. Application of the Framework
 
We now proceed to an evaluation of the actions proposed in the NEPAD document. The evaluation will be illustrative rather than comprehensive, since the actions in the NEPAD document are themselves meant to be initial statements for further elaboration and discussion.
 
The broad structure of the NEPAD proposals has been outlined in Section 2. It should be clear from the discussion above that the proposals under A1, the Peace and Security Initiative, score very highly on all three criteria set out. Actions are envisaged in four areas: "prevention, management and resolution of conflict; peacemaking, peacekeeping and peace enforcement; post-conflict reconciliation, rehabilitation and reconstruction; and combating illicit proliferation of small arms, light weapons and landmines." While there is room for discussion on specifics, the actions proposed are clearly regional, they are clearly well suited to an organization emanating from democratic governments, and their direct and indirect impacts on poverty reduction are significant. It is encouraging, therefore, that the NEPAD document notes that "The leadership of the New Partnership for Africa's Development will consider, within six months of its establishment, setting out detailed and costed measures in each of the four areas above. The exercise will also include actions required of partners, and the nature and sources of financing such activities."
 
The same is true of key actions under the Democracy and Political Governance Initiative. These consist of: "a series of commitments by participating countries to create or consolidate basic governance processes and practices; an undertaking by participating countries to take the lead in supporting initiatives that foster good governance; and the institutionalization of commitments through the New Partnership for Africa's Development leadership to ensure that the core values of the initiative are bided by." Again, there is room for discussion and perhaps disagreement on specifics, but at this level of generality these actions score high on all three criteria.
 
But consider now actions under A2, the Economic and Political Governance Initiative, which were laid out in Section 2 as an illustration of the details in the NEPAD document. While there are clearly some regional dimensions of these actions, and while it is clear that good economic management is the sine qua non of medium term growth and poverty reduction, it is not immediately obvious that the actions listed are particularly suited to NEPAD's comparative advantage, nor that many of them might not be better carried out by other organizations such as the African Development Bank. It is also not clear how country specific agreements with the IFIs will interact with these region wide initiatives in economic management. At the very least, it would seem that some further debate and discussion is needed before a top priority is put on this for allocation of NEPAD's scarce resources.
 
Under A3, Sub-Regional and Regional approaches to development, the NEPAD document broaches actions that overlap with actions under other headings as well, but covering "Regional Public Goods":
 
"The New Partnership for Africa's Development focuses on the provision essential regional public goods (such as transport, energy, water, ICT, disease eradication, environmental preservation, and provision of regional research capacity), as well as promotion of intra-African trade and investments."
 
While regional public goods clearly fit into the R domain of NEPAD's comparative advantage, and thus score high on the first criterion, questions remain on (i) are there other regional organizations that are doing the job? and (ii) which of these regional public goods has a significant effect on poverty through combining positive direct and indirect impacts? Of the examples mentioned in the quote above, regional research capacity is perhaps best left to the African Development Bank, and the NEPAD document recognizes this. There are also, of course, numerous sub-regional organizations for coordinating transport and trade issues. Duplication of these efforts should be avoided. On poverty, regional efforts at vector borne disease eradication would clearly score higher on direct impact than, for example, regional transport initiatives. All of these factors must be borne in mind when prioritizing between such regional public goods.
 
Under Sectoral priorities, NEPAD discusses a wide array of actions, all of which would be beneficial to African development but only some of which are particularly well suited to NEPAD's comparative advantage, and would be of major immediate benefit to the poor. Rather than go through each of the actions in detail, we will merely take some examples to illustrate the application of the criteria above.
 
Consider, for example, the array of actions under "Investing in Information and Communication Technologies," which are listed in Section 2. The first action is to "work with regional agencies such as the African Telecommunications Union and Africa Connection to design model policy and legislation for telecommunications reform, and protocols and templates for e-readiness assessment." Since this is an area where other regional agencies are already working, the issues of NEPAD's involvement must be scrutinized carefully to assess its priority. The second and third actions, "work with regional agencies to build regulatory capacity," and "establish a network of training and research institutions to build high-level manpower," are not specified in sufficient detail for evaluation. They are of course in principle plausible for a regional institution to take up. But, (i) there are other regional agencies dedicated to these tasks, (ii) it is not clear how the democratic roots of NEPAD feed in to them and (iii) the direct poverty impacts are not obvious, although indirect and medium term benefits could be substantial through growth enhancing investments in ICT. The fourth action, "promote and accelerate existing projects to connect schools and youth centers is very much in the N or L domain-it is not clear that it is the comparative advantage of an institution in the R domain to prioritize this. Finally, the statement of the fifth action, "work with development finance institutions in Africa, multilateral initiatives (G-8 Dotforce, UN Task Force) and bilateral donors to establish financial mechanisms to reduce sector risks," itself highlights that there are other agencies already deeply involved, and does to clarify what exactly NEPAD as an institution could bring to the table.
 
Many of the actions in the sectoral priorities portion of NEPAD would thus score low on the three criteria laid out above. But there are other actions that would indeed score highly. For example, health is a sub-category under B2, and the following actions are envisaged under this heading:
 
  • " Strengthen Africa's participation in processes aimed at procuring affordable drugs, including those involving the international pharmaceutical companies and international civil society, and explore the use of alternative delivery systems for essential drugs and supplies;
  • Mobilise the resources required to build effective disease interventions and secure health systems;
  • Lead the campaign for increased international financial support for the struggle against HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases;
  • Join forces with other international agencies such as the WHO and donors to ensure support for the continent is increased by at least US $10billion per annum;
  • Encourage African countries to give higher priority to health in their own budgets and to phase such increases in expenditure to a level to be mutually determined;
  • Jointly mobilize resources for capacity-building in order to enable all African countries to improve their health infrastructure and management."
 
In this list of actions there are some for which comparative advantage of NEPAD relative to other agencies is not necessarily strong. For example, in the second proposed action, if the systems and interventions are primarily national it is not clear that a regional institution has a comparative advantage raising resources for them. Similarly, while of course improving of health infrastructure is to be welcomed as a general medium term goal, the sixth action seems like a general exhortation-it is not clear that this is a leading candidate for the scarce resources represented by NEPAD's special comparative advantage, and there are other agencies already working on this.
 
However, the first, third, fourth and sixth sets of actions listed above would score very highly on the three criteria. These are actions which make best use of NEPAD as a regional entity and a credible democratic voice for Africa, where it is unlikely that other Africa-wide agencies could be as effective, and where the direct and indirect impacts on the health of the poor are very great. The global debate on the prices charged by international pharmaceutical prices for key drugs is directly crucial to the well being of millions of poor people across Africa. Northern governments are under pressure from their own civil societies to enact various legislations with respect to this issue. What Africa needs in this debate is a credible voice that can represent all of Africa, and be representative of the people of Africa. NEPAD fits the bill. The allocation of resources to give NEPAD the technical support it needs in this debate would therefore get high marks on our criteria. The same is true for the campaign to increase international financial support for an attack on communicable diseases. Moreover, it is well known that a major problem in Africa is that African countries' own health budgets are highly skewed in favor of the urban rich. NEPAD's development and operation of an Africa wide mechanism of mutual monitoring would draw on NEPAD's twin sources of comparative advantage-its regional character and its roots in representative government.
 
Consider now the third category of actions proposed under NEPAD, Mobilising Resources. Some care is again needed here in separating out those actions which are primarily national in nature and over which NEPAD can have little influence, or which are best done by other regional agencies, and those actions which can truly capitalize on NEPAD's comparative advantage. Let us start with C1, the Capital Flows Initiative. NEPAD, with its special authority, can play a strong role in fashioning a case for deeper and broader Debt Relief (a sub-category of actions under C1), while at the same time developing mutual monitoring mechanisms for ensuring that the proceeds of debt relief do indeed find their way directly to the poor. This is particularly true given a perception in some quarters that the international debt relief initiative is stuck at too timid a level.
 
However, there is less of a strong case for NEPAD giving high priority to ODA issues in general (another sub-category under C1). It is not clear that the issue is sufficiently well crystallized in the international domain in such a way that NEPAD could play a special role. Other agencies such as ECA should perhaps take the lead in such issues as responses to the PRSP framework, and the NEPAD document recognizes this. On encouraging private capital flows (the final sub-category under C1), the actions suggested in the NEPAD document are all perfectly reasonable, but it is not clear that they have a priority claim on NEPAD's scarce capital, and there are surely other agencies which have better technical expertise to carry out tasks such as reviewing investment related legislation or enhancing capacity of countries to implement PPPs.
 
The Market Access Initiative, C2, similarly has a mix of actions that are on the face of it either very well suited to NEPAD's comparative advantage and to the poverty reduction objective, or not as well suited. It is hard to think that NEPAD could develop sufficient sectoral expertise, for example in mining, to achieve very specific sectoral goals. Others, such as "develop new industries, or upgrade existing ones, where African countries have comparative advantages, including agro-based industries, energy and mineral resource-based industries," seem far too general, and in any case squarely in the national domain, to not have a priority claim on NEPAD resources. However, the objective that "if a new round of multilateral trade negotiations is started, it must recognize and provide for the African continent's special concerns, needs and interests in future WTO rules," is clearly one in which NEPAD should take a lead role, supported by technical agencies. This is because it is important in international negotiations for Africa to speak not only with one voice but a voice that has credibility because it represents the will of the African people through democratically elected heads of state.
 
Let us finally consider, as an application of the framework developed in this paper, the programmes that the NEPAD document itself argues should be "fast-tracked". As noted above there are four of these-Communicable Diseases, ICT, Debt Reduction and Market Access. Of these four, the framework developed here would strongly support Communicable Diseases and Debt Reduction as priorities for NEPAD. The three questions posed in the criteria set out in the previous section would be answered as follows. (i) These actions are particularly well suited to a regional organization and other regional organizations in Africa are not doing them particularly well or at all. (ii) In making a continent wide argument for debt reduction, in developing monitoring mechanisms and protocols for prudent use of the proceeds of debt relief, and for presenting and defending the interests of Africa vis a vis international pharmaceutical companies in the court of world opinion, an African organization rooted in democratic values has a special comparative advantage. (iii) Both debt relief and health advances in communicable diseases will have a direct beneficial impact on the well being of the poor, as well as indirect and medium term benefits through the overall climate for economic growth. Debt Reduction and Communicable Diseases would therefore score high on all three criteria. But the same is not true of ICT and Market Access. ICT has been discussed above. Market Access is a very large sub-category, some components of which would not score high but others, particularly those focusing on WTO and other specifically international issues where a democratic voice from Africa will be effective, would indeed be prioritized in the framework developed in this paper.

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