African academics are enthusiastic … sceptical … suspicious, but all want to be involved in NEPAD, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, recognising it, despite reservations, as an unprecedented effort to pull the continent up by its bootstraps.
Some 150 academics from all over Africa spent three days debating the plan in Pretoria this week — a searching appraisal of its genesis, its hopes, its methods and its chances of success.
It will be a central theme of a G8 summit next week of highly industrialised countries in Kananaskis, Canada, where African leaders will be seeking their commitment to it.
The plan, drawn up by several heads of state and endorsed by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), has won wide support from government and business leaders as an initiative proposed by Africans themselves.
It calls for massive investment in the continent as African countries pledge to follow global standards of democracy, and has been likened to the Marshall Plan, under which the United States pumped vast sums of money into Europe after World War II to rebuild and by doing so to counter communism.
The academics who met in Pretoria agree that the plan provides a dynamic which was not provided by earlier attempts to integrate African development.
It comes 45 years after African countries began winning their independence, which was followed by phases of authoritarian rule, coups, the flowering of democracy, and the end of apartheid in South Africa.
”For the first time, NEPAD is offering a perspective, a dream on a continent-wide scale. At the very least, it is an inspiring vision,” said Luc Sidjoun, a professor of international relations at the University of Yaounde.
Criticisms abound, nevertheless.
The ”continental experts”, as they were billed, noted that NEPAD includes identified developmental projects, often on a regional scale, but judged it too optimistic, or too vague, on how the huge funding will be obtained.
Some also said they disagreed with its implicit acceptance of the liberal macro-economic policies advocated by international institutions which have not addressed African countries’ specific needs.
”Good governance to me is not necessarily good governance to the World Bank,” noted one speaker.
That is one reason why they are determined to make their views on NEPAD known to Africa’s leaders, as they did in Pretoria, where President Thabo Mbeki met with them on Monday.
Some argued they did not want to see NEPAD become simply a ”super structural adjustment programme”.
”NEPAD is a bit like the Bible. It can be read and used differently by a Catholic, a Protestant, an Anglican,” said Irae Baptista Lundin, head of the socio-political department at Maputo’s International Relations Institute.
”That’s not what makes it a good or a bad book.”
The concept of a ”new partnership” is not taken for granted either.
Some noted that it was unprecedented that the G8 should discuss a plan for Africa devised by Africans with African leaders at two consecutive summits — in Italy last year and in Canada this year.
”It doesn’t matter whether that was prompted by western fears that Africans with nothing to lose might commit desperate acts or by a sincere desire to explore our resources,” Lundin said.
”The opportunity must be seized.”
Others, however, said the appeal for massive private investment exposed one of NEPAD’s limitations: that if ”partnership” meant simply that the west sees Africa only as an investment opportunity, it was a waste of time.
”Poverty is extreme in Africa, with historic causes that can be traced, therefore it has to be historically confronted,” noted Anyang Nyongo, of the African Academy of Sciences in Nairobi.
He argued for 100% debt forgiveness as a starting point.
Some academics criticised the narrow participation in drawing up NEPAD, which was crafted by heads of state, but others defended it, saying that developmental projects had always been initiated by the elite.
”You can’t ask for NEPAD or the African Union (due to succeed the Organisation of African Unity in July) what you didn’t ask for the Treaty of Rome (which founded the European Union), said Sidjoun.
”How many ordinary Germans or French have been associated with the Treaty of Rome, or even know its details? See, though, what it has done for Europe.”
-Sapa-AFP