A — African Union
The African Union was formed in July last year to replace the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). It is still a very conceptual body — none of its key protocols have been ratified — but will enhance the work of the OAU by introducing more muscular peacekeeping and democratic peer review mechanisms. The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) is a policy of the AU.
B — Bridging the gaps
Nepad aims to bridge the gaps between Africa and the global community by developing infrastructure, education, digital technology, human skills, water and sanitation, transport and energy to end the scourge of underdevelopment that afflicts Africa. The aim is to improve access and reliability of infrastructure services, and put Africa in a more favourable position to produce and export its foreign investment and exportation of African products.
C — Conflict
Membership of the AU brings new responsibilities and provides the AU with wide powers to enforce corrective behaviour. In its first year a lot of work and energy have been spent on resolving the Great Lakes conflict. A continental security initiative includes preventing, managing and resolving conflicts; peacemaking, peacekeeping and enforcing.
D — Debt relief
Africa is labouring under heavy debt and cancellation of the debt would place Africa on a better footing to fight poverty. In Nepad documents leaders call for debt payments to be limited to a “proportion of budget revenues” and linked to costed poverty reduction outcomes. If this proposal is to be implemented most African countries will require further debt cancellation totalling $134-billion.
E — Economy
The success of Nepad depends on building strong, competitive economies. With less than 1% of world trade, consensus is growing that growth depends on the Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation countries radically reducing their agricultural subsidies, valued at more than $360-billion a year. Nepad calls for new partnerships between rich countries and Africa. But Africa has been warned not to expect buckets of aid money to land in its lap.
F — Finance
Nepad is Africa’s Marshall Plan. “It is expected to require $64-billion a year, but the chequebooks to make this money available are not yet open. There needs to be a quid pro quo. You need investment, and for that you need stability. For stability, you need peace and democracy,” says Dr Chris Landsberg, director of the Centre for Policy Studies.
G — Governance
Nepad requires African states to create conditions for democratic norms. This implies liberal democratic and free market conditionalities, says Landsberg. These condition- alities are highly criticised by civil society. “It seeks to make Africa attractive to foreign direct investment through, among other things, limiting state interference and reforming the civil service.”
The doctrine is that Africa will come out strongly against anybody who comes to power through unconstitutional acts. There are certain criteria for intervention — if sovereignty is under threat, or if instability in one state threatens the stability of other states. However, the will and capacity to intervene are in question.
H — HIV/Aids
The HIV/Aids epidemic is unarguably the greatest threat to Africa’s development. Nepad lacks a serious focus on the HIV/Aids epidemic in Africa. Grouped together with communicable diseases like tuberculosis and malaria, the lack of prominence of HIV/Aids in Nepad is seen as a damaging oversight, most notably by the United Nations Aids agency, UNAids. Africa is home to countries, such as South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana, with the highest rates of HIV/Aids infection.
I — Implementation committee
This Nepad committee consists of 20 heads of state. The aim of this big daddy committee is to drive the protocols of peace, security and governance and identify strategic issues that need research and management at the continental level.
J — Jacob Zuma
The South African deputy president’s pivotal mediation role in the Great Lakes conflict enacted central imperatives of Nepad (see “Conflict”).
K — Kabila, Joseph
Joseph Kabila, the new Democratic Republic of Congo President, is at the core of conflict resolution in the Congo. Nepad will not succeed without a peace solution in the Congo because it is Africa’s largest and potentially wealthiest country.
L — Law
Nepad commits African governments to establish a human rights code of conduct, and to acknowledge the interdependence of all human rights. Nepad addresses political governance and human rights primarily through the Declaration on Democracy, Political, Economic and Corporate Governance and the African Peer Review Mechanism, which were officially adopted by the AU.
Nepad critics have questioned the failure of the document to acknowledge the progress made in defining and protecting human rights.
M — Mbeki, Thabo
Nepad has been personally identified with Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa. In 1998 Mbeki motivated his philosophy of an African renaissance. Once he took office in 1999, the philosophy became a political project, when Mbeki spearheaded the Millennium Africa Recovery Plan, which was merged with the Omega plan of President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal to form Nepad. Although Nepad was initially viewed as a South African project, Mbeki has been able to make other countries feel they have a stake.
Mbeki ensured that Nepad was adopted as an official programme of the newly formed AU, and secured the backing of the Commonwealth and financial commitment of the G8.
N — Nepad
Pledge by African leaders, based on a common vision and a shared conviction, that they have a duty to eradicate poverty and place their countries on a path of sustainable growth and development, also to participate actively in the world economy and body politic. In civil society Nepad is also viewed as Africa’s self-imposed structural adjustment plan.
O — Ownership
Nepad prioritises African ownership and management.
P — Poverty alleviation
The impoverishment of the African continent was accentuated primarily by the legacy of colonialism, the Cold War, the workings of the international economic system and the inadequacy of and shortcomings in the policies pursued by many countries post-independence. Forty of 44 sub-Saharan countries, with 93% of the region’s people, have grown too slowly since 1990. Half of those 40 countries, with more than half of the region’s people, are poorer now than in 1990. Sub-Saharan Africa ended the millennium 5% poorer than in 1990.
Q — Quiet diplomacy
The antithesis of peer review, this type of engagement is primarily one used to describe the approach of African leaders (notably Mbeki) to the unfolding political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe. Mbeki believes that quiet diplomacy (private closed-door meetings; public solidarity) is more persuasive than megaphone diplomacy, where rights failings are loudly and publicly criticised with sanctions usually imposed.
R — Regional integration
Nepad depends firstly on regional integration of states. Efforts are currently under way to make organisations like the Southern African Development Community and the Economic Community of West African States work more efficiently.
S — Security
The post-Cold War ways of dealing with security are: prevention of conflict, peacemaking and peacekeeping. This is how strong states impose their will on weak states, for example, South Africa’s invasion of Lesotho. But human security (largely social security) is also gaining currency in the Nepad debate with the realisation that the term and its understanding need to be expanded.
T — Trade
Though contested by civil society, Nepad takes trade and aid to be the twin pillars of Africa’s economic regeneration. While trade is unlikely to substantially boost the economies of the least-developed countries, it is essential for emerging economies like South Africa, Angola, Mozambique and Kenya, and the larger economies of North Africa, such as Egypt and Morocco.
U — Urbanisation
“Africa’s leaders need to pay more attention to urbanisation and the sustainable development of their cities, and the place to do this effectively is in Nepad,” said Dr Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, executive director of UN-Habitat. Africa is the fastest urbanising region in the world, with an urban population that is expanding at double the rate for the world as a whole.
V — VIPs
Wiseman Nkuhlu, head of the Nepad secretariat, is widely regarded as the key manager of the plan. A qualified accountant, former businessman and development specialist, Nkuhlu tirelessly works the globe “selling” the idea to foreign governments and multinational partners. Other VIPs will be drawn into Nepad’s ambit through the AU’s Panel of the Wise and an Eminent African Persons group.
W — Women
Initially criticised for being gender-blind, an effort was made to bring women and gender into the central thinking of Nepad in July last year. South Africa’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, said all women should play an advocacy role for this important component of the African society in the process of evolution of Nepad, as this is not a static programme.
But Florence Butegwa, regional programme director of the UN’s women’s agency, Unifem, says that although women are mentioned here and there, Nepad does not appear to deal with gender perspectives of development.
“It does not address how narrowing the gender gap in all sectors, not just by promoting girl education, is key to progress. It does not bring out the elements of the partnership between men and women in the Nepad project.” A gender task force is to be established to ensure that the specific issues faced by poor women are addressed in the poverty reduction strategies.
X
Crossing borders. Nepad’s greatest challenge is to get governments to limit sovereignty both physically and politically. Politically, its methods of peer review and democratic barometers set up checks that are supranational. Physically, it will require borders to come down eventually.
Y — Young
At just under a year old, the AU and its daughter policy, Nepad, are still babies. It took Europe 57 years to unify after World War II.
Z — Zimbabwe
The weak link because Nepad principles like peer review and good governance are being flouted in Zimbabwe, while African leaders have failed to enforce the principles in the first challenge for both the AU and Nepad.