South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel was upbeat on Thursday on the progress achieved in making Nepad a reality, saying its fledgling peer review was a world first.
”We must recognise the African peer review mechanism as a major breakthrough from anything that has happened anywhere previously,” he told delegates at the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Africa summit in Durban.
More than 600 political, business and civil society delegates are meeting in the East Coast city to discuss how to move the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) from words to actions.
The peer review mechanism aims to monitor whether countries are adhering to Nepad principles.
Manuel said one of the major challenges facing Africa was to ensure mutual accountability, and this was what Nepad, which he described as the first major initiative since the cold war, was all about.
In this regard progress in setting up the peer review mechanism was exceedingly important.
In the past year six prominent Africans had been appointed to the unit, and 15 countries had signed up for peer review. Unless Nepad was seen as trustworthy and mistakes were corrected, people might lose faith and courage to take it forward.
Africa, therefore, needed to build stronger supra-national organisations and Africans must develop an ”intolerance of mediocrity”.
”There is no other part of the world that has taken issues that far because that’s laying your soul bare, and I think that’s an important element,” he said.
But, Manuel stressed the developed world was not doing enough to help resolve the massive debt problems plaguing Africa, and stripping it of money.
”There is still too much money that flows off the African continent as part of debt service, a lot of it quite unjustifiable,” he said.
Ghanian private sector development minister Kwamena Bartels, however, was less optimistic on peer review. Addressing a separate session, he said a lot needed to be done by both African countries and international partners to make Nepad work.
Developed countries had been slow in lowering the barriers to trade for African nations, and had fared poorly in, among other things, fulfilling its promises on development aid and cutting debt.
He also said some African leaders had not delivered on Nepad and in particular on the peer review mechanism, but that the recovery plan must not be allowed to be held back by the poor performance of those countries.
A number of African governments appeared to have problems with delivering on the commitments towards transparency and accountability, therefore, they would struggle to live up to standards required by Nepad.
But, if other countries delivered on the commitments, these would be ”dragged along”.
”I believe it is important to let these drivers take Nepad forward… in the hope that others that are not as committed will see themselves left behind and will be under pressure from their people to move forward,” Bartels said.
Only 15 of the 53 member countries in the African Union had so far signed up for Nepad’s peer review mechanism, he pointed out.
Meanwhile, Merril Lynch vice-chairman for Europe, Middle East and Africa, Brian Henderson, said there was a great opportunity now for Africa to ”get on with it” and not be distracted by competition for investment from outside the region.
Europe was currently going through a tremendous amount of economic dislocation and the United States was facing a huge challenge in getting its economy back on track.
”The opportunities are there, it’s a question of getting on with the programme,” he said. – Sapa