OLA AWONIYI, Abuja | Tuesday
AFRICAN leaders flew to Nigeria on Monday ahead of a one-day summit on ways of tackling damaging wars and corruption and pressing for an opening up of rich Western markets to African goods.
Presidents and officials from up to 20 countries were due on Tuesday to discuss ways of putting into practice an ambitious programme aimed at ensuring good government and sound economic planning across the continent.
The meeting on the so-called New Partnership for African Development (Nepad) initiative comes ahead of this year’s G8 meeting of industrialised nations in Canada in June, due to consider Western relations with the developing world.
Coming just days after the UN summit on poverty ended in Monterrey, Mexico, the Abuja summit hopes to capitalise on the western world’s pledge to increase aid for countries that take the path of political and economic reform.
According to officials, the leaders will sit down early Tuesday to hear an update on the continent’s major conflicts, from Democratic Republic of Congo to Angola; discuss tackling corruption, and ways of gaining access to highly-subsidised Western agriculture markets.
The host of the meeting is Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo, chairman of the Nepad initiative, who over the weekend held talks with Thabo Mbeki of South Africa.
Other leaders due at the meeting were Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame and Senegal’s Abdoulaye Wade while Gabon’s Vice President Didjob Divungi Di Ndinge was expected.
Ghana, Mali were expected to be represented by their respective foreign ministers while Botswana was to be represented by Finance Minister Baledzi Gaolathe.
“This summit … is part of the build-up towards the G8 summit in Canada,” the head of the Nepad office in Nigeria, Isaac Aluko-Olokun told reporters on Monday.
The meeting would look at a Nepad committee’s report divided into three broad sections: the vision and philosophy of Nepad, the initiative’s strategy, and specific projects to be implemented, Aluko-Olokun said.
No mention was made of specific issues, from Zimbabwe to the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo or specific economic targets to be discussed.
As well as the leaders of the 16 member countries of the Nepad initiative, the summit organisers have also invited the presidents of four observer countries and the head of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), Nigerian officials said.
Meanwhile, officials said Canada’s Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who will host the G8 summit of most developed nations in Canada in June, would hold talks with six African leaders here next month.
Chretien, who will be making his second visit to Nigeria since it returned to civilian rule in 1999, will meet here with six African leaders on April 5, Nigerian officials said in a statement.
No other details of Chretien’s visit were immediately available.
The 16 member countries of the Nepad initiative invited to the summit are: Algeria; Botswana; Cameroon; Congo; Egypt; Ethiopia; Gabon; Mali; Mozambique; Mauritius; Nigeria; Rwanda; Senegal; South Africa; Tunisia and Zambia.
The observer countries are: Ghana; Sao Tome and Principe; Tanzania and Uganda. – AFP