After the knock it took in the recent confusion over peer review the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) has been given fresh legs in preparations for major encounters it is planning with Europe and China next year.
Africa’s home-grown recovery plan will be “harmonised” with programmes in place between the African Union (AU) — when it was still the Organisation of African Unity — and the People’s Republic of China.
Both programmes were launched in 2000 at top-flight conferences in Cairo and in Beijing.
European and African foreign ministers met in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, from November 26 to 30 to draw up the agenda for the follow-up to the Cairo summit that will be held in Lisbon next April.
Their meeting followed hard on similar gathering in Addis Ababa last week between African and Chinese ministers preparing for the second session of the Sino-African Forum in the Ethiopian capital next November.
Both these have to take account of new developments, notably the formation of the AU and the $6-billion endorsement of Nepad by the G8 — the eight most industrialised countries in the world.
“These have provided China and African countries with good opportunities to further expand and deepen our cooperation in various fields,” China’s Deputy Foreign, Minister Yang Wenchang, told the meeting in Ethiopia.
South Africa’s ambassador in Beijing, Tim Kubheka, said the Nepad secretariat would be invited to meet the forum to develop synergies.
The Africans are expected once again to press China for more than such platitudes. In Beijing two years ago delegates worked through the night to get a commitment from China to open its markets to Africa and to give South Africa approved status to receive Chinese tourists.
Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin indicated that next year they would take things further. “It is necessary to arrive at a win-win strategy whereby African products have preferential access to the Chinese market.”
Cheng Tao, who heads the steering committee on Sino-African cooperation, said China’s private-sector businesses would be encouraged to deal directly with their counterparts in Africa, rather than working through the state.
“China supports the proposal by African countries for a meeting of businessmen on the sidelines of the ministerial meeting,” said Cheng.
Beijing will “encourage performing Chinese companies to attend this meeting so as to facilitate direct contacts and cooperation between Chinese and African firms,” he said.
“African and Chinese firms could discuss, for example, various rules and regulations that hamper trade,” said one African speaker.
“Such companies encounter everyday problems such as authorisations, certification and visas,” he added.
Between January and September this year Sino-African trade was worth $8,8-billion, up more than 8% on the same period last year, according to Chinese official figures published during the conference.
To date China has invested in about 577 companies in 49 African countries, most of them trading firms, industrial manufacturers or companies dealing in natural resources, transport and agriculture.
China has signed bilateral deals with 21 African countries on encouraging and protecting investments.
In Dakar this week, Senegal’s Economic Minister, Cherif Salif Sy, said the Nepad steering committee would be expanded to include the private sector and NGOs. It would also look at inviting a representative of the G8, the World Bank, the AU, the African Development Bank and others to join the committee.
The Ouagadougou meeting took place against the backdrop of the aborted meeting in Brussels of lawmakers from the European Union and the 78-nation African, Caribbean and Pacific Group (ACP).
The European Parliament’s decision not to admit two Zimbabwean ministers, who are on the list of 72 Zimbabwean officials barred from entering the EU, led to a walkout by ACP delegates. Earlier this month a Southern African Development Community-EU meeting had to be moved from Copenhagen to Maputo to enable Zimbabwe to participate.
South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, speaking in Lisbon, said she was sure the travel ban would not hamper next April’s summit.
“Hopefully we can find some kind of amicable solution,” Zuma said.
Her Portuguese counterpart Antonio Martins da Cruz added: “We both believe the horizon will be clear by next April.”
The African ministers in Ouagadougou were working from the declaration and plan of action adopted in Cairo. In addition to Nepad, they prioritised debt relief, the return of African artefacts, regional cooperation and integration into the global economy, conflict prevention, human rights, HIV/Aids and other pandemic diseases, food security and the environment.