What is NePAD?
The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NePAD) is an African-led strategy for sustainable development and poverty reduction in Africa. It recognises Africa’s responsibility to create the conditions for development by ending conflict, improving economic and political governance and strengthening regional integration. African leaders are looking for support from the international community to achieve these goals. They are seeking help to end Africa’s acute economic marginalisation with measures including increased resource flows, improved trade access, debt relief, support for infrastructure, agricultural diversification and human development (health and education).

Background
NePAD is a continuation of political developments that were already taking place in Africa, principally in the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). From the beginning of the 1990s African countries recognised that their previous practice of non-interference in each other’s internal affairs had to be modified in the case of conflicts which spilt over boundaries and became a collective responsibility. In 1999 the OAU took a further step in agreeing to exclude countries whose governments came to power by unconstitutional means. (On this basis Cote d’Ivoire was excluded from OAU meetings after its military coup). NePAD takes a further step down this road in introducing a measure of regional oversight in matters of political and economic governance.

Other factors that prompted the NePAD proposals included recognition of Africa’s growing economic marginalisation, the reduction in aid flows at the end of the cold war and the growth of violent conflict in failing and collapsed states. There was growing recognition that it was often failures of governance (weak institutions, unaccountable management of public funds, political exclusion) that lay behind the conflicts and economic decline which contributed to Africa’s continuing impoverishment. The return of civilian rule in Nigeria and the end of apartheid in South Africa released energies of a new leadership in the two regional giants of the continent.

NePAD's leadership
NePAD was initially developed and articulated by a small group of African leaders and then endorsed by the OAU. Presidents Mbeki, Obasanjo, Wade, Bouteflika and Mubarak form the NePAD Steering Committee. An expanded 15-member Implementation Committee was established in October 2001. In addition to the Steering Committee, its members are Mozambique, Botswana, Ethiopia, Mauritius, Rwanda, Gabon, Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Mali and Tunisia, giving the committee three representatives from each of the OAU’s five regions. Plans are underway to increase representation to four countries from each region. Ghana and Angola have now joined the Implementation Committee.

The NePAD programme
NePAD is not a short-term policy but a long-term agenda for Africa. It has been adopted as a programme of the Africa Union. The NePAD Secretariat is developing an Implementation Plan and building linkages with existing regional organisations such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and Southern African Development Community (SADC). The Secretariat has engaged with other African organisations, such as the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the Africa Development Bank (AfDB), to elaborate proposals in support of NePAD priorities. One of the most innovative features of NePAD is the plan to create a peer review mechanism as a means to monitor progress and raise standards of political and economic governance. In November 2002 thirteen Africa countries had volunteered for peer review, which is due to commence in April 2003.

The relevance and vitality of NePAD
NEPAD’s key feature is its African ownership and the political and policy leadership it offers to create the conditions for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. The challenge its leaders have posed to the rest of the world is to ask whether there is a willingness to work with them to define a new way of co-operating with Africa. They want to agree on a framework of partnership and mutual accountability to address the policy constraints that inhibit Africa’s development.

Response to NePAD from the international community
The G8 Action Plan, announced in Kananaskis on 27 June 2002, is a significant response to NePAD but does not represent the totality of the international response. The Plan was prepared through a series of discussion meetings conducted among Personal Representatives of G8 leaders in dialogue with representatives of NePAD leaders. It includes a commitment that half or more of the new development funds announced in Monterrey could be used in African countries that create the 'right policy environment'. This is seen as a key commitment that could reverse the decline in aid flows to Africa. The G8 Plan also contains new commitments to develop African conflict resolution and peacekeeping capacity in a more co-ordinated way.

New resources, both financial and technical, will be needed in the context of building a new partnership with Africa. But the underlying objective of the G8 Action Plan is neither to provide a massive infusion of funding nor to underwrite NePAD projects more generally. The aim is to put in place a new partnership that will unlock much greater resources, both public and private, over the long term. G8 leaders undertook to ensure the effective implementation of the Action Plan and asked their Personal Representatives for Africa to provide a report on progress at the next G8 summit, which is scheduled to be held in France in June 2003.

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