The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) is the most significant continent-wide economic initiative to emerge in contemporary Africa. The basis of NEPAD is a commitment by African governments to put in place the good governance preconditions for economic growth, including strengthening democracy and the rule of law, achieving peace and security, and reducing corruption. These measures, in and of themselves, will help create an enabling environment for development. In response, the international community is expected to provide fairer market access for African products, debt relief and increased high quality aid flows, to enable Africa to meet the International Development Goals.
NEPAD has several components, including governance, peace and security, and economic development. It is a sovereign process, driven by African governments, that brings together pre-existing initiatives including the Millennium Partnership for Africa’s Recovery, led by South Africa, Nigeria and Algeria, and the OMEGA Plan of Senegal. In some respects, NEPAD is in fact an exercise in bringing together existing best practices of development partnership such as participatory PRSPs. The criticism that there is ‘nothing new’ in NEPAD therefore misses the point. There is no revolutionary blueprint for solving Africa’s problems, but instead increased effort put into what already works, and greater persistence in reducing or removing known obstacles to development, such as unsustainable debt overhang. The emphasis on regional cooperation is also not new, but is given new urgency. What makes NEPAD different is the African political commitment behind it, and the fact that it has been greeted very positively among major aid donors including the G-8. The U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, recently called for a doubling in existing aid flows to the developing world, from $53 billion to $100 billion, by 2015. A major increase in Britain’s aid commitment to Africa is likely to be part of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s programme for the coming year. Other major donors are envisaging similar actions, not merely in increasing financial assistance, but also transforming the modalities of aid provision so that it is pooled and guaranteed for a longer period, reducing transaction costs and increasing effectiveness. In this context, NEPAD is the initiative that western leaders have seized upon as the modality for assisting Africa.
NEPAD is therefore a synthesis of what is known to work and what is believed to work, packaged in a manner that can gain the confidence and support of African and international partner governments.
Although NEPAD is not integrally linked to the African Union, it shares many of the same principles and aims. It is likely that the two will succeed together, or not at all. Because NEPAD is an pan-African initiative, the prospects for success depend upon all governments cooperating, and ensuring that the weakest performers are enabled to overcome their problems. Governments that are clearly failing the governance test, for example, are not merely harming themselves but are damaging the prospects for the whole continent. The old argument of non-interference in the internal affairs of African countries, already largely discarded, must be abandoned altogether. Every African country is its brother’s keeper.
The major challenges facing NEPAD are similar to those facing the AU itself: how to make the process more inclusive and participatory, so that it is underpinned by effective consultation and participation from the widest range of stakeholders.
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