The New Partnership for Africa’s Development is a fine blueprint for progress and needs support from everyone, says Baroness Lynda Chalker.
The attention of the world is being drawn to the plight of Africa in a fast globalising world. When Britain hosts the G8 summit at Gleneagles in Scotland in early July, Africa’s development challenge will be top of the agenda.
Under the leadership of prime minister Tony Blair and chancellor Gordon Brown, Britain will use its concurrent presidencies of the G8 and the EU to highlight the fact that realising the benefits of globalisation remains a major challenge for Africa. While many developing countries are making significant economic progress, including several in Africa, the situation in most of Africa remains bleak. The majority of the continent’s nations continue to suffer from poverty, disease and slow economic growth.
Recent studies, such as the Report of the United Nations Millennium Development Project, indicate that Africa, and in particular sub-Saharan Africa, is one region that is unlikely to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which set out to halve world poverty by 2015.
African countries have made attempts in the past to address some of these challenges, but none has been more coherent and integrated than the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad). The Nepad initiative was launched by the new African Union by African heads of state and government in 2001. Its aim is to address the social, economic and political problems facing the continent. The vision and leadership is clearly there but the challenge remains one of translating ideas into actions, with sustainable results.
No quick fixes
Many criticisms have been levelled at Nepad. One is that progress has been too slow. But Nepad is a long-term programme, designed to evolve over a period of more than 20 years. For Africa, there are no quick fixes to overcome the problems that are legacies of the colonial and post-colonial periods, and some years of unsustainable economic policy.
Nepad has had some notable successes. One of the cornerstones of the initiative is the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) which was set up to promote good governance. So far, 24 countries have signed up to the APRM, which demonstrates a clear commitment to reforms in governance and socio-economic development. Of the 24, four have already been reviewed, of which Ghana and Rwanda have completed their self-assessments. Good governance is an essential pre-requisite for attracting much needed foreign and local investment. Now the challenge is for the countries that have been assessed to implement the lessons learned.
It is against this background that the Commission for Africa and its report should be viewed. The commission was not set up to ‘solve Africa’s problems’ but to make recommendations on how to support many of the initiatives and changes already taking place under African leadership. It has recommended new interventions for providing aid, assisting with building capacity and the need to encourage ‘public/private partnerships in order to create a stronger climate for growth, investment and jobs’.
Africa’s future will depend to a great extent on a thriving private sector. There has to be real progress on the part of African governments, and in particular the private sector, in meeting the goals and principles of Nepad. The private sector should be encouraged to support African governments in their drive to start up and finance projects through improvements in the financial, legal and regulatory environments.
Helping hands
The African Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank have supported Nepad’s infrastructure programmes in the areas of technical assistance and funding. The ADB has approved financing worth $580m, while the World Bank has approved $570m. The projects financed so far have been for road and railway works and power generation. It is through carefully planned partnerships and support that Nepad’s programmes will be successfully implemented.
The Commission for Africa’s report is a positive move by the developed world to keep Africa on its radar screen throughout 2005 and beyond. All actors in development and those who believe that Africa matters must now harness their resources to help secure its future.
Baroness Lynda Chalker of Wallasey is chairman of Africa Matters Limited
