Johannesburg | Monday
SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki will address the World Economic Forum in New York on Thursday to call for funding for The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), his office said.
“The president will be making a strong call for financial backing,” his representative Bheki Khumalo said on Sunday.
He said African leaders and officials had ended a four-day meeting on Nepad at Benoni outside Johannesburg where they concluded that more African countries need to become involved in the recovery plan for the continent.
“The question of buy-in from African countries is really important,” Khumalo said after the gathering adopted a working document aimed at “increasing country participation” in Nepad.
The initiative is being spearheaded by Mbeki and the presidents of Algeria, Nigeria, Senegal and Egypt.
Nepad sets out a series of targets for democracy and good governance, with sustainable economic development, with a view to achieving a growth rate of seven percent on the African continent by 2015.
Mbeki’s financial advisor Wiseman Nkhulu on Sunday told SABC public television delegates that the meeting had agreed on the need to draft standards of compliance for countries in order to benefit from Nepad.
“We need to set standards of good behaviour and negotiate measures of ensuring compliance and steps to be taken if countries deviate,” he said.
Nepad initiative was adopted by African heads of states in Nigeria last October, after being adopted by the Organisation of African Unity earlier. – AFP