The church is no expert on social, economic, and political development. It does, however, have a rich history in human development. Indeed the church must articulate its concern for humane development. Through its global rootedness in local communities on both sides of the poverty and riches divide, its primary concern for the poor, and its profound influence on Africa’s historical development, the church is well-placed to articulate an informed assessment of the possibilities that NEPAD offers.

The church continues the mission of Christ at the service of humanity when it engages NEPAD. We declare with Christ:

"The spirit of the Lord is on me, for he has anointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim a year of favour from the Lord".

The church is called by God, together with all people of faith and good will, to restore our collective vision for ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ no less than we are called to bring individual or personal healing and peace.

Accordingly, our comments on NEPAD are informed by:

• The experience of the majority of people in impoverished African countries and the experience of participation in popular struggles for global social and economic justice in a world that is rapidly undertaking a process of globalisation.

• Analysis arising out of a process of attempting to understand the motivations for, dynamics within, process towards, and content of the current NEPAD proposals, through engagement with the NEPAD secretariat, discussions with some NEPAD engineers, participation in seminars and public events on NEPAD, engagement in civil society forums intended to analyse NEPAD, and a general assessment of the social, political, economic, and ecological terrain in which NEPAD emerges.

• Reflection that gives rise to an evaluation of NEPAD based on values and principles inherent to the church’s tradition of social engagement:

This assessment is intended to stimulate further and more focused debate about what NEPAD means for us as Africans and as Christians. It does not pretend to be either exhaustive or definitive, but is meant to encourage discussion, reflection, and action. It is a preliminary articulation of a considered position on NEPAD that goes beyond rhetoric and public posturing, in the firm belief that a better world is possible for Africa’s people.

NEPAD is not the first development plan put forward by African leaders. There have been other plans, such as the Lagos Plan of Action (1980), that have not mustered the international political will necessary for implementation.

Leaders of industrialised countries have been more willing to accept NEPAD because:

• Current socio-economic trends in Africa are likely to thwart the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of halving world poverty by the year 2015;
• NEPAD’s language and assumptions are more consistent with those of donor governments;
• NEPAD enjoys broad ‘ownership’ across the African continent; and
• NEPAD prioritises foreign direct investment (FDI), which is seen as a more lasting solution to Africa’s problems than Official Development Aid (ODA).

Nor are the issues addressed by NEPAD entirely new. Over the past eight years, international institutions and national governments have debated many of the issues that NEPAD identifies as key areas for Africa’s recovery. Much of the discussion has focused on the economic and political relations between countries of the North and South. NEPAD proposes a "partnership" model for North-South relations. This amounts to a pragmatic "middle way" that blurs clear choices between, for example, immediate poverty eradication programmes and long-term economic growth strategies or debt cancellation and sustained debt servicing.

In order to assess NEPAD’s likely impact, we must first examine some of the most contentious issues in this debate.

NEPAD is essentially a response to the problems created by the conditions typically attached to international financing. It aims to give African governments more power to shape financing conditions in order to enhance their coherence, consistency, and political legitimacy.

Church-based agencies active in campaigns for global social and economic justice (such as the Jubilee movement) have argued in the past for ‘conditionality from below’ where financing conditions would be determined by participatory civil society processes rather than being unilaterally imposed by creditors and donors. This is meant to ensure that resources, including the proceeds of debt cancellation, are channelled to poverty eradication rather than to savings, arms procurement, new debt servicing, or other unproductive expenditure that does not directly reduce poverty.

By 1999-2000, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank began to recognise the potential benefits of local "ownership" of financing conditions. They reworked the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) into the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) and required all highly indebted poor countries (HIPCs) that wanted to qualify for debt relief to implement national processes for compiling Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs).

Once PRSPs became a condition for debt relief, many countries hastily devised inadequate PRSP processes. National PRSPs also had to go back and forth between the relevant country and the IMF/World Bank up to six times for amendments before being finally approved. In the end, PRSPs imposed conditions virtually identical to the old Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs). The process delivered a hopelessly insufficient outcome to reduce poverty significantly. Furthermore, countries such as Nigeria and South Africa that are not classified as HIPCs are not eligible for relief under this plan.

After participating in national PRSP processes, most civil society organisations across Africa came to regard them as inadequate and ineffective. However, the IMF and World Bank claim that PRSPs are valuable, that the process is improving, and that HIPCs must be more "realistic".

The lack of meaningful debt cancellation led churches and others in the global movement for socio-economic justice to urge African governments to stand together as a political bloc, a "debtors’ cartel" with a shared negotiating position. The 1999 World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting in Seattle demonstrated the effectiveness of this strategy. African governments at the meeting worked together to block a new round of trade negotiations until outstanding issues affecting Africa could be resolved.

The call for African governments to stand together was intended to build support for joint debt repudiation if meaningful debt cancellation was not delivered by the end of the year 2000. However, the G77 Havana summit concluded that debt repudiation was not a viable option because some poor countries would be unable to withstand the economic consequences.

The international financing conditions and policy advice emerging from the IMF/World Bank have prompted many African nations to adopt market fundamentalist economic policies that have been heavily criticised by churches and others in the global justice movements. Critics of market fundamentalist policies argue that they have:

• deepened poverty;
• been designed to ensure maximum debt repayment;
• increased inequality;
• resulted in spiralling unemployment;
• led to increased costs for basic services, food, fuel and energy supplies, and social services;
• made African economies even more fragile and vulnerable;
• promoted values detrimental to social development in Africa; and
• deepened social and political instability on the continent.

Market fundamentalism has driven the widespread privatisation of social services and state assets. International economists and political officials, including some African leaders, have defended privatisation as a necessary mechanism to create new investment opportunities and attract foreign capital. However, both civil society organisations and official statistics indicate that rapid privatisation and restructuring has been associated with spiralling joblessness and increased costs for basic services across Africa. This, in turn, has contributed to political conflict and social instability.

Lately, justice activists have emphasised the need to transform global economic policy and structures to deliver immediate benefits directly to the poor in Africa through the redistribution of resources. They challenge the dominant economic assumption that the benefits of economic growth led by private capital investment would eventually ‘trickle down’ to the poor to produce effective and sustainable poverty reduction. Well-developed civil society proposals for corrective changes, such as the introduction of an international currency transaction tax to raise finances for poverty eradication and to protect vulnerable developing economies, have been largely ignored.

Africa virtually disappeared from the global political and development agenda after the cold war. Global justice campaigns have sought to put Africa squarely back on the agenda by highlighting the continent’s poverty crisis and the failure of recent development prescriptions. However, political and economic leaders in industrialised nations have resisted taking meaningful action on these matters, resorting instead to the manipulation of public opinion. They succeeded, for example, in creating the false perception that the debt crisis was resolved at the 1999 G7 summit in Cologne, Germany.

Outside of Africa, the continent is almost always portrayed as mired in conflict, corruption, disease, and dictatorship. The May 2002 cover story of The Economist, for example, declared Africa to be "The Hopeless Continent". The natural beauty, cultural diversity, hospitality and sense of celebration, richness of natural resources, academic excellence, and technical skill found throughout the continent rarely feature in popular images of Africa abroad. Examples of progress or sites of commercial development are either ignored or dismissed as "un-African". These perceptions undermine Africa and threaten healthy economic and political relations between African nations and the rest of the world.

The increasing reliance of African governments on advice from institutions like the IMF and World Bank has led to a corresponding decrease of transparent and accountable policy-making, especially with respect to economic policy. Parliaments throughout Africa routinely do not have control over budget priorities, nor do they participate effectively in monitoring public expenditure. National treasuries and international financial institutions have strongly resisted the introduction of effective parliamentary (and thus, public) oversight of new borrowing.

The churches and global justice movements have also opposed the persistent warfare and high levels of arms spending that have plagued many parts of Africa since colonial times. Churches have been concerned not only with the immediate human suffering caused by war, but also with its negative impact on poverty eradication and the development of greater solidarity among the peoples of Africa.

The ability of popular campaigns to alter the course of globalisation to secure a better deal for the world’s poor has been limited by the enormous imbalances in political and economic power enjoyed by the various parties to global policy debates. It has become clear that more vigorous mobilisation of public opinion and popular action is necessary to expand the boundaries of political debate and to shift the current national and international power relations in favour of the poor and excluded.

There has been a growing call for the beneficiaries of slavery, colonialism, and apartheid to take steps to repair the social, political, economic, environmental, and cultural damage that has been inflicted on Africa. Proposed measures included acknowledgement of past wrongs, truth-telling, compensation, debt cancellation, preferential terms of international trade, structural changes to global economic and political systems, and some form of reconstruction plan for Africa along the lines of Europe’s post-Second World War ‘Marshall Plan’. These calls have been met with cynicism and scorn in international business and political circles and have been rejected in global forums such as the 2000 United Nations’ World Conference Against Racism.

Northern governments typically argue that it is more productive to focus on building a better future, rather than dwelling on past injustices. However, the hypocrisy of this position is obvious when these same nations cite historic evidence of the reduction of poverty and inequality in an attempt to justify their sluggishness in tackling current injustice.

The churches’ evaluation of NEPAD must therefore assess the extent to which it is likely to resolve the above problems in order to promote equitable North-South relations and to address Africa’s development needs. Of course, we should not expect perfection from NEPAD. It is presented as a starting point, a framework. Nonetheless, this framework strongly suggests the general direction to be taken. NEPAD may be seen as Africa’s attempt to present itself in an acceptable manner, to secure a seat at the globalisation wedding feast. But the garments NEPAD chooses reveal whose feast it is, who the guests are, and what the quality of the marriage will be.

The NEPAD framework seeks to introduce African-controlled conditionality, however incompletely or imperfectly. The document emerged from a core group of new-generation African leaders and is endorsed by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). G77 leaders have also been consulted about its content, although it was only finalised after consultation with the IMF/World Bank and the G7. To the extent that NEPAD outlines the conditions on which the partnerships between African and industrialised countries will be based, it does not offer anything dramatically new. Instead, it largely reiterates the conditions that have been demanded by creditor and donor countries in the past, both in terms of governance and economic strategy. However, it does include a proposed process for mutual North-South evaluation and accountability, even though this is not yet adequately developed.

It is still unclear whether NEPAD intends to replace the PRSP process or whether it simply intends to place the PRSP process within a more developed framework. NEPAD officials have made conflicting statements about this, even though the NEPAD document indicates that debt relief should be linked to detailed poverty reduction plans. While NEPAD might eliminate IMF/World Bank control of the PRSP process, this would only affect countries that explicitly commit themselves to NEPAD. NEPAD participants would ultimately face a similar system of externally-imposed conditionalities, albeit from a source closer to home. However, NEPAD does have the potential to extend poverty eradication mechanisms to all African countries (rather than just HIPCs) because of its pan-African scope.

NEPAD should be seen as an African continental PRSP. It follows the logic and structure recommended by the IMF/World Bank for the development of national PRSPs (see diagram, right) - except that civil society participation has been omitted in the NEPAD process itself.

NEPAD promises to develop dynamic collaboration and accountability among African governments in an entirely new way. It proposes to develop a code of conduct for African leaders that will include a limitation of terms for heads of state or government, as well as an independent peer review mechanism that will make public reports. In many ways this is driven by a ‘new-boys club’, rather than the ‘old-boys club’ of the past. However, understood in the context of shifting geopolitical alignments on the continent, this creates the risk that Africa may be divided into two very clear camps: those backing NEPAD and those resisting it. Even so, NEPAD has the potential to create a bloc of African leaders who can, if their policy and strategy advice is appropriate, radically alter Africa’s future participation in multilateral organisations.

The Model of Development: NEPAD fails to offer any alternative to the dominant market fundamentalist development model that places unquestioning faith in uncontrolled, private sector led, rapid economic growth as the answer to the problem of rampant poverty, despite the evidence that this strategy in fact deepens poverty, increases unemployment, and widens inequality in the short and medium term, while making national economies extremely vulnerable to speculative capital and ‘market sentiment’. NEPAD in fact promotes a market-driven strategy as the solution to Africa’s problems, effectively allowing the immediate needs of the poor to go unmet in exchange for some uncertain end in the distant future.

Social Spending: NEPAD will require more fiscal austerity from African governments, especially in the delivery of social and basic services. Although health care and education are addressed in the document, NEPAD’s strategy is not to make additional resources for education and health care available within national budgets. Rather, resource mobilisation is expected to occur through ‘public-private partnerships’, special global funds, and other unreliable measures.

Debt Cancellation: NEPAD proposes a new approach to debt that links relief to government revenues and spending on poverty reduction programmes according to nationally determined goals. NEPAD is expected to limit debt servicing to 10% of government revenue. However, its basic projections on debt sustainability are similar to IMF/World Bank methods that have failed to deliver meaningful debt relief. More substantial debt cancellation is required if poverty is to be substantially reduced. If industrialised countries are serious about forging a "new partnership" with Africa, this should begin with the ‘clean slate’ of total debt cancellation. In addition, special consideration must be given to odious debts such as those of Nigeria and South Africa.

NEPAD attempts to address debt issues through its resource mobilisation initiative rather than by identifying debt cancellation as a priority pre-condition for sustainable development. Furthermore, NEPAD would make Africans exclusively responsible for securing the conditions for sustainable development in Africa, without clarifying Northern responsibilities such as debt cancellation and the establishment of a more just, transparent, democratic, and accountable global economic system.

Trade: NEPAD strongly advocates increased African access to European and North American markets through the removal of trade barriers and the abandonment of state subsides in industrialised countries that distort market-determined prices for raw materials, particularly agricultural products. NEPAD also promises to provide greater access to African markets through increased regionalisation and participation in the global economy.

Rich countries subsidise their agricultural products to the tune of $1 billion each day, leading to massive over-production of agricultural products that are dumped on African markets. This depresses prices for agricultural products so that African countries earn far less for their products than they would otherwise. In addition, when Africans export products to rich countries they face high trade tariffs designed to protect industries in rich nations. This causes poor countries to lose more than $100 billion a year – double what they get in development aid. In a classic example of double standards, rich countries are simultaneously using the WTO to exert strong pressure on African nations to eliminate trade barriers that protect their own vulnerable industries.

The trade negotiations between the European Union and South Africa and the recent introduction of heavy tariffs on European steel exports to the United States of America illustrate the enormous resistance to foreign competition in industrialised countries. It is therefore very doubtful that the world’s richest countries will readily introduce fair terms of trade for politically weak African states.

However, despite the unfairness of the current system of trade, market access limitations are not the central problem for Africa in the global trading system. Only those African countries with strong export capacities are likely to benefit from fairer terms of trade. Even then, large monopoly agribusiness interests are better placed to capitalise on these changes than small-scale farmers who produce primarily for local markets - and thus provide food security in developing countries. The real problem is the indiscriminate removal of trading regulations designed to protect industry, services, agriculture and agro-genetic resources. The deregulation demanded of Africa by the WTO has deepened food and economic insecurity.

NEPAD’s emphasis on market access is intended to facilitate export-oriented growth. This strategy ignores the need to reorient production from export agriculture led by big corporate interests to small farm-based production primarily for the local market and protected from unfair competition from subsidised Northern products by tariffs and quotas. NEPAD should protect the rights of small-scale African farmers to access, save, use, exchange, sell and breed their seeds, plants, food crops and other agro-genetic resources as envisioned in the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Model Legislation.

NEPAD endorses rapid and extensive privatisation in various forms as a key strategy to create investment opportunities, attract foreign investment, and develop infrastructure across the continent. It ignores the severe social consequences of such measures, especially in a context of widespread poverty and inequality.

NEPAD adopts strategies intended to deliver long-term and indirect poverty alleviation. It proposes initiatives that have already been attempted in some African countries but that have not delivered concrete benefits to the poor. In its current form, NEPAD offers no reliable plan to deliver immediate benefits to the growing numbers of impoverished people in Africa or to address the continent’s unemployment crisis. These should be central objectives of a continent-wide development plan such as NEPAD.

NEPAD has succeeded in engaging the leading political and economic powers in dialogue on the course of Africa’s development. As a result, Africa and NEPAD are major themes of the upcoming G7 Kananaskis summit. The political will that has been generated through the NEPAD process as a result of energetic work by Africa’s leaders, represents a major achievement for NEPAD that must be applauded. However, the way in which that political will has been deployed is ambiguous at best. It remains to be seen whether that political will can be sustained if broader popular consultation eventually alters NEPAD’s primary direction.

NEPAD is largely a marketing strategy for Africa that attempts to overcome the negative perceptions of Africa to which many political, business, and civil society leaders outside the continent cling. It has, for whatever reasons, received much acclaim and won international political respectability that could be harnessed for the benefit of the continent.

Local communities and civil society organisations had no meaningful opportunities to influence the development of NEPAD’s process or content. This illustrates the problematic trend in the "globalised" world for major national and international priorities to be decided by elite groups using opaque, unaccountable processes that bypass democratic institutions. Although the architects of NEPAD chose not to consult civil society groups, they did solicit input from senior IMF/World Bank officials, leaders of industrialised countries and the captains of global industry in the World Economic Forum.

The issue is not whether a particular group or social sector was consulted; it is about the strategic orientation and content of NEPAD. In its current form, NEPAD is not informed by the lived experience, the needs and knowledge of the communities who are meant to benefit from its new vision for Africa’s development. There can be no sustainable development without the informed participation of the communities affected.

NEPAD gives the highest priority to conflict management and resolution and peace-building as preconditions for sustainable development. The problem of conflict and wars in Africa is correctly associated with concerns around resource exploitation, systems of governance, and broader issues of poverty. African governments actively involved in NEPAD have already launched some promising initiatives to end long-running wars and to promote political rather than military mechanisms for resolving new conflicts. Currently, the war in Sudan remains the biggest challenge to NEPAD’s peace-building initiative.

NEPAD makes no clear proposals to change the current balance of international power that presents the single biggest obstacle to Africa’s development. The rhetoric of a "new partnership" dresses up what is essentially Africa’s deepening involvement in the inadequate existing international political and economic structures of power. ‘Partnership’, in a context of seriously disproportionate power relations amounts to little more than domination.

Only passing mention is made in NEPAD to Africa’s history of slavery and colonialism, with no mention of the need for reparations. This represents a conscious decision by NEPAD’s authors to avoid the politically-charged language of historical justice and reparations. However, NEPAD presents itself in many ways as a post-colonial Marshall Plan for Africa’s recovery. Nonetheless, reparations remain a major concern not only for the Southern African victims of severe human rights violations under apartheid, but also for a wide variety of civil society groups across the continent.

The demand for compensation for social, environmental, and personal harm is linked not only to historical abuses, but also to the ongoing damage that trans-national corporations have inflicted on the environment, health, and human rights in many parts of Africa. NEPAD does not provide an effective mechanism to resolve these concerns. Nor does it provide an ethical basis for engaging with business leaders to contribute to Africa’s reconstruction or mechanisms to protect the environment or the rights of Africa’s people.

The church has a duty to engage with Africa’s legitimate political leaders in the interests of the common good of Africa and the world. We do this in a way that respects our unique areas of competence, with a fundamental commitment to raising the legitimate hopes and aspirations of those who are excluded. Accordingly, the church engages with NEPAD as a flawed and inadequate, but nonetheless welcome, initiative for Africa’s inclusion as part of the global human community.

NEPAD contains several important elements that could be further developed into effective mechanisms for Africa’s reconstruction and development. These signs of hope present us with unique possibilities for growth if they are affirmed and nurtured:

6.1.1. NEPAD could replace externally imposed conditionalities with more appropriate development strategies if African leaders determine these through participatory, democratic national processes.

6.1.2. NEPAD can provide an authentic African development model to respond to widespread poverty if it is informed by the real needs of impoverished communities.

6.1.3. NEPAD offers an opportunity to develop more effective collaboration and accountability among African governments to protect the interests of African peoples, especially in multilateral forums, if this is accomplished through an inclusive process across Africa.

6.1.4. NEPAD can generate the political will necessary to end the wars that continue to plague Africa.

6.1.5. NEPAD can effectively challenge the global perception that Africa is a "lost continent".

6.1.6. NEPAD can engage industrialised countries in an honest, transparent, and ongoing discourse about Africa in the context of globalisation, allowing a re-examination of assumptions about the benefits of globalisation.

6.1.7. NEPAD can provide an alternative model for debt cancellation to break the current impasse.

Some crucial aspects of NEPAD are very disturbing. Despite widespread public discontent, NEPAD endorses strategies that have been incapable of building stable, just, and caring societies in Africa.

6.2.1. NEPAD articulates the serious negative impact on Africa of the market fundamentalist development model that has been the keystone of globalisation. However, it then promotes a repackaged version of this same model as the solution to Africa’s economic problems. Given the recent experiences of poor people in African countries that have already adopted these policies, NEPAD’s macro-economic framework must be seriously questioned.

6.2.2. NEPAD overlooks the severe negative impact that rapid privatisation of social and basic services has had on impoverished and highly indebted communities.

6.2.3. There was no meaningful popular participation in the formulation of NEPAD. Sustainable development requires the participation of Africa’s people at all stages of the process.

6.2.4. NEPAD fails to address the underlying national and international power relations, structures, and processes that will ultimately determine the success or failure of the process.

6.2.5. NEPAD does not offer a clear mechanism to resolve the issue of reparations due to Africa’s people.

Africa’s reconstruction and development is our collective responsibility. The church must participate with energy and commitment in this task. Accordingly, the following proposals are made to correct the failures of the NEPAD process and to improve its content and focus:

6.3.1. NEPAD must recognise that Africa requires a fresh start. Africa cannot begin to develop unless the massive current social backlog is directly addressed as a first step. NEPAD should therefore include, as a priority, an additional programme to deliver immediate and direct anti-poverty programmes to alleviate the suffering of the poor. NEPAD, in its current form, is a long-term strategy. A new anti-poverty programme should include short-term job-creating infrastructure development programmes, developmental grants to individuals (such as South Africa’s proposed Basic Income Grant), subsidies for the provision of basic services such as water and electricity, comprehensive programmes for HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention, greater protection for small industries that are particularly vulnerable to the forces of globalisation, and land transfers to poor households.

6.3.2. Meaningful debt cancellation must be prioritised as a precondition for the success of any other medium or long-term strategy for social and economic recovery.

6.3.3. NEPAD must give higher priority to rapidly increased public investment in social services such as health care and education.

6.3.4. NEPAD must include corrective changes to the international financial system such as an international currency transaction tax and the allocation to African reconstruction and development of a set proportion of the revenues raised in rich countries.

6.3.5. NEPAD must address the call for decisive corrective action to repair the damage caused to individuals and communities in Africa as a result of slavery, colonialism, and apartheid.

6.3.6. NEPAD must be subject to review by broad-based national consultative structures throughout Africa. To this end, a civil society liaison unit should be established within the NEPAD secretariat and national civil society representatives should be elected to participate in official NEPAD discussions.

In ongoing faithfulness to the mission of Christ, the church must continue to raise collective public awareness of the ways in which current global financial, trade, and political systems hurt the poor throughout the world, just as Jesus "upset the tables of the money changers and the seats of the dove sellers" in the temple. The Earth is the household of God, and humanity is God’s temple today. The global human community is therefore called to live together in dignity and solidarity. The skewed power relations between rich and poor limit the possibility of transforming global structures into just and caring systems. This remains the biggest challenge to Africa’s reconstruction and development. The church must proclaim the good news that a better life is possible for all of Africa’s people.

Any assessment of NEPAD would be incomplete without an analysis of the response of the G7. NEPAD will be given centre-stage at the 2002 G7 summit in Kananaskis, Canada. The G7 have already warned that Africa should not expect too much too soon - especially not a general commitment to mobilise the $64 billion that would be required to ensure NEPAD’s success. The Africa Plan they announce in June 2002 is expected to contain three components:

The exact nature of the G7’s "paradigm shift" on Africa remains unclear. There will be at least two elements to it:

• Those African nations that fully adopt the NEPAD model will be selectively favoured by the G7 over countries that do not toe the line. NEPAD’s proposed peer review mechanism, including a code of conduct for African leaders, will be used as the primary mechanism for determining NEPAD’s winners and losers in Africa. While NEPAD presents itself as a framework for more effective African solidarity and collaboration, this is a recipe for increased competition and division in Africa.
• The G7 will underwrite NEPAD’s view that private capital investment must be the primary engine of rapid economic growth and development. The G7 is known to prefer this model of development over increased ODA, debt cancellation, and direct poverty eradication programmes.

The G7 will, in effect, support the cost-free aspects of NEPAD while avoiding any commitment to provide additional resources for Africa’s development. The result will be the diversion of ODA and other funds to indirect support such as policy advice and to private sector development. Such assistance will take the place of direct budget support to poor countries in terms of their nationally determined poverty reduction priorities.

European companies keen to extend their economic interests in the delivery of privatised services, such as water, will be the primary beneficiaries. But the privatisation of water has a terrible track record. For example, many people in South Africa - particularly minimum-waged or unemployed women - have suddenly faced water bills that account for close to half their monthly incomes.

The G7’s over-emphasis on peace-building and governance issues in Africa without a corresponding commitment to support Africa’s reconstruction and development in material budget-support terms does not inspire confidence in NEPAD. This "wait-and-see" attitude reinforces doubts about the viability of an African development model based on the hope of a new partnership with rich countries.

G7 representatives routinely argue that endemic corruption constitutes the single biggest deterrent to support for African development. Corruption is indeed a major problem in many African societies. As Africans we must be determined to do everything possible to identify and root out corruption in the public and private spheres. Above all, we must eliminate the incentives to corruption by establishing mechanisms to catch and prosecute those who are guilty of corruption and by refusing to collaborate in the sale of stolen, counterfeit, or other illegal goods.

Corruption is an abuse of public power for personal or sectarian gain. It is a global problem that goes beyond the realm of the inter-personal. Transparency International’s 2002 Bribe Payers’ Index (BPI), for example, highlights the ignorance of business leaders in industrialised countries concerning the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) convention against bribery. 42% of business executives in the richest countries have never even heard of the anti-bribery convention signed by their governments, while a further 32% have heard of it but do not know what it says. The BPI asserts that both the supply (developed country) and demand (developing country) sides of corruption must be addressed forthrightly as bribes typically originate from exporting countries.

However, corruption is more than bribery. The BPI also rates countries that use corrupt methods other than bribery to gain unfair advantages for business in their countries. These include:

• USA 58%
• France 26%
• United Kingdom 19%
• Japan 18%
• China 16%
• Russia 13%
• Germany 11%

Corruption must be viewed in its totality and must be rooted out throughout the world, in both its inter-personal and structural forms. The G7 and other industrialised countries have as much a role to play in this regard as do African countries. This is especially the case given that the increased opportunities for foreign trade and investment in Africa envisioned in the NEPAD framework will mean new opportunities for the growth of international corruption in all its forms.

In the same way that many African countries are willing to undertake a path of self-criticism and renewal, G7 leaders must make a firm commitment to support Africa in achieving the priorities and plans identified through participatory and democratic national processes.

NEPAD is an ambitious and ambiguous plan. While its analysis of the problems that confront Africa is accurate and its goal of an African continent free from war and poverty expresses the deep-felt hope of all Africans and people of good will, the economic path it chooses is bound to fail this objective.

NEPAD proposes greater African incorporation into the current global economic system as the solution to Africa’s economic problems. This ignores the fact that part of the problem is that Africa is already more integrated into the global economy than any other continent, to the detriment of Africa. Africa is already too economically dependent on the rest of the world. Its trade with the rest of the world accounts for 45.6% of its total economic activity while the same ratio is only 13.2% for North America, 12.8% for Europe, 23.7% for Latin America, and 15.2% for Asia.

The extent to which civil society structures in Africa are able to hold their governments to account through democratic processes will be the extent to which governments are accountable and transparent. A recovery plan for Africa should focus its vision in the first instance on direct and immediate measures to assist local communities to break out of the poverty trap. This can be an effective way to boost people-centred economic growth that builds social stability, human security, and prosperity in Africa.

However, not all Africa’s problems can find their solution in that way. Challenges to end regional wars and to support international efforts for conflict resolution in particular countries require an international focus that is entirely necessary.

NEPAD’s vision is blurred by setting its sights on the hope that greater global integration will save Africa. This arises from the absence of popular participation in determining its focus. Yet NEPAD’s vision can be restored if Africa’s leaders enter into a new partnership with their people. The vision of a new Africa dawning in the twenty-first century is too precious to be lost because we failed to see that Africa’s children, men, and women are its greatest treasure.

APPENDIX

By 2015 all 189 United Nations Member States have pledged to:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger:

• Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day.
• Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.

2. Achieve universal primary education:

• Ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling.

3. Promote gender equality and empower women:

• Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015.

4. Reduce child mortality:

• Reduce by two-thirds the mortality rate of children under five.

5. Improve maternal health:

• Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio.

6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases:

• Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS.
• Halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.

7. Ensure environmental sustainability:

• Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes.
• Reverse loss of environmental resources.
• Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.
• Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.

8. Develop a global partnership for development:

• Develop further an open trading and financial system that is rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory. Includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction nationally and internationally.
• Address the least developed countries special needs. This includes tariff and quota-free access for their exports, enhanced debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries, cancellation of official bilateral debt, and more generous official development assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction.
• Address the special needs of landlocked and small-island developing states.
• Deal comprehensively with developing countries’ debt problems through national and international measures to make debt sustainable in the long term.
• In cooperation with the developing countries, develop decent and productive work for youth.
• In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries.
• In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies – especially information and communications technologies.