Two of the architects of an ambitious rescue plan for Africa will take centre stage Wednesday at the opening session of a three-day World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in the South African city of Durban.
South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki and Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria are due to share their visions for the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) during the opening plenary, according to the programme.
Later on Wednesday, President Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique, one of Africa’s poorest countries, Mbeki and Zambia’s Levy Mwanawasa are to discuss how the plan can be put into practice during a session with BBC HardTalk’s Tim Sebastian.
The meeting in the Indian Ocean city has pulled eight African presidents and some 700 delegates from 47 countries, 26 of them African, and is expected to evaluate business support for Nepad as one of the determining factors in the response to it by the G8 highly developed nations at their June 26-27 summit in Kananaskis, Canada.
Adopted by African heads of state in Abuja last October, Nepad aims to rework the relationship between Africa and the developed world from one of beggar-philanthropist to equal partners with a common goal — developing the continent not as an act of charity but for the sake of global security and prosperity.
Described as a Marshall Plan for Africa and envisaging annual investment of some $64-billion (68-billion euros), Nepad sets an annual gross domestic product growth rate target of more than seven percent for the next 15 years, and aims to reduce the number of Africans living in extreme poverty by half by 2015.
G8 leaders have come out in support of Nepad, notably Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, the current G8 chairman, who made a five-country tour of Africa in April and pronounced that he was impressed by it.
Apart from Mbeki, Obasanjo, Chissano and Mwanawasa, presidents Festus Mogae of Botswana, Bakili Muluzi of Malawi, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, and Daniel arap Moi of Kenya are also due to attend the meeting. – AFP
