Heads of state opening talks at the African Union (AU) summit on Wednesday night will focus on ways to implement an ambitious plan for the economic recovery of Africa.
For the past year, AU committees have examined how to implement The New Partnership for Africa’s Development or Nepad can be implemented into the key areas of agriculture, trade and protecting the environment over the next three years.
”Nepad must be harmonised and synchronised with all AU projects,” Firmino Mucavele, a special adviser to the Mozambican president told journalists at the summit on Wednesday.
The African Union aims to create a political infrastructure that will promote greater continental coherency and unity. It believes that mission will be made easier by implementing Nepad, which is a blueprint for Africa’s sustainable growth and the eradication of poverty.
Africa is the poorest and least developed continent, with many countries worse off today than in the 1960s when many achieved independence.
Born out of collaboration between leaders from South Africa, Nigeria, Algeria and Senegal, Nepad seeks to promote economic recovery through partnerships with governments and investors in the developed world.
While the plan has received support from G-8 countries, some of those countries also warned African leaders that the success of the plan hinges on the African pledge to insure good governance on the continent.
The reluctance by the AU to confront such issues as the political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe has caused some Western countries to voice doubts that the plan can work.
But Mucavele said AU members were already implementing Nepad
principles in conflict situations and in restructuring programmes in southern Africa.
And he said the plan was the AU’s vehicle for reaching people at the grass roots level, battling with one of Africa’s greatest challenges — a lack of infastructure.
The Committee of Permanent Representatives of the African Union, a gathering of African ambassadors in Addis Ababa, has called for the plan to be implemented over three years. It also has suggested the creation of a special body to coordinate the implementation.
In its report, the committee said the goal was to ensure that the AU would be transformed from a political organisation into a programme geared toward economic and social development.
But a new survey released at the summit indicated member countries still have not adequately explained the plan.
The South African based Centre for International and Comparative Politics said about 80% of those polled in South Africa knew absolutely nothing about Nepad.
”This is a disturbingly low figure for a country where one of the principal architects of Nepad, Thabo Mbeki, hails from,” the report said.
Researchers polled about 2 000 people from South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal, Kenya, Algeria, Uganda and Zimbabwe. What they found was that the overwhelming majority believed Nepad was driven by elitist leaders, emulating European organisations.
Respondents were also asked to provide a Nepad achievement wish list.
The most desirable benefit was poverty eradication, followed by improvements in democratic governance, African unification, increased investment and jobs for the unemployed. – Sapa-AP