African leaders have now come up with another plan called "The New Partnership for Africa's Development". While this plan has gained high international praise, the people of Africa, including labour unions, farmers, community-based organisations and NGOs were excluded during its formation. How can such a plan succeed without the full participation of the people of Africa? It has long been recognised that failure of development in Africa has mainly been due to the marginalisation of its people from decision-making on the one hand, and irresponsible government on the other. This new plan has put promotion of democracy and good governance as the first priority, yet the formation of the plan began without the full involvement of the people. This deficit is now the challenge to the African heads of states who formulated the initiative.

The origin of NEPAD:
The New Millennium for African Recovery Programme (MAP) was proposed by President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa. The Omega Plan was proposed by President Wade of Senegal. They were combined to form the New African Initiative (NAI). The name was changed to New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).

Birth date: October 23, 2001

Birth place: Abuja, Nigeria

Planners: African heads of state through their Implementation Committee, chaired by President Obasanjo, who adopted the revised October edition of the NEPAD Document.

Proposed secretariat: Pretoria

A conference on development of specific programmes, projects and financing for NEPAD took place in Dakar, Senegal, April 2002. Results are still minimal. The plan will be presented at the next Group of 8 summit meeting.

NEPAD is needed because:
• 50% of Africa's population live on less than US$ 1 per day;

• Mortality rate of children under 5 years of age is 140 per 1000;

• Life expectancy at birth is only 54 years;

• 42% of the population has no access to safe water;

• The rate of illiteracy for people over 15 years of age is 41%;

• There are only 18 mainline telephones per 1000 people in Africa compared with 146 for the world as a whole and 567 for high-income countries.

What is at stake:
The abundance of untapped natural African resources, including capital, technology and human skills.

Objective:
"This New African Initiative is a pledge by African leaders based on a common vision and a firm and shared conviction that they have a pressing duty to eradicate poverty and to place their countries, both individually and collectively, on a path of sustainable growth and sustainable development and at the same time to participate actively in the world economy and body politic."

Strategies:
• The leaders begin their document by reviewing the place of Africa in today's world, "The hopes of Africa's peoples for a better life can no longer rest on the magnanimity of others".

• They state the new political will and their resolve to spread democracy. “Across the continent, democracy is spreading, backed by the African Union (AU) which has shown a new resolve to deal with conflicts and censure deviation from the norm. One of NEPAD's foundations is the expansion of democratic frontiers and the deepening of the culture of human rights.

• They set out the strategy;

• Show programmes of action and an implementation plan.

It is argued that the strength of NEPAD is its strong emphasis on democracy and governance which makes it different from the past attempts at fashioning Africa-wide initiatives for African development. But the plan shares certain features with past efforts. Like its predecessors, actions are discussed within a broad and general context.

The leaders point out the following immediate priorities and "fast-tracking". Recognising the need to sequence and prioritise, the initiating presidents propose the following programmes to be fast-tracked, in collaboration with development partners:

• Contagious diseases - HIV/AIDS, malaria and

tuberculosis;

• Information and communication technology;

• Debt reduction;

• Market access.

The critique of NEPAD
NEPAD should be understood as part of a historical process in the search for a viable model for development in Africa since the 1960s.

There were several attempts made by African leaders to produce plans but these were rejected or ignored by the international community. Will lessons learnt from previous plans improve NEPAD?

A close look at the main components of NEPAD shows they are aimed at strengthening "public goods" and minimising "public bads". NEPAD finds itself, however, within unregulated globalisation, which is increasingly maximising "global bads". To regulate globalisation, priority should be given to the production, financing, management, and conservation of global public goods(1). At the global level, however, global public goods are part of a new agenda which was excluded from the UN Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development. Lack of global initiatives aimed at channelling financing to global public goods,(2) NEPAD will receive very little global financial support.

Resource mobilisation is not specific either. What is known is that a Commonwealth Africa Investment Fund has been formed, and that the Development Bank of Southern Africa had already committed US$ 25million to NEPAD. Collaboration with the Finance Corporation of the World Bank is envisaged.

• Globalisation and Africa's position in it;

• Causes of Africa's underdevelopment;

• Poverty;

• Its relationship with the dominant features of neo-liberalism: the Washington Consensus;

• True meaning of development.

As a charter or manifesto for designing the political-economic future of a continent whose ailments have been the subject of countless mis-diagnoses, mis-constructions, mis-prescriptions, and diversionary speculations, NEPAD has been a heads-of-state project, almost exclusively owned by the New African Leadership Group. Efforts of the New Leadership group to popularise it have ended up reinforcing the perception that it is little more than a marketing exercise, targeted at the multilateral donor community and the western bureaucratic elite.

The main critique of NEPAD, which was also acknowledged by the president of Senegal Mr Wade, was the lack of participation of Africa's civil society.

On a more ideological plane, civil society critics contend that NEPAD is an unquestioning endorsement of the neo-liberal framework for seeking uncritical integration into the world economy, and that such an endorsement, besides many other misgivings it may give rise to, fails to recognise that it seems to assign a subordinate role to the African economies in the current globalisation process.

Globalisation, into which NEPAD would like to uncritically integrate the African economies, is increasingly revealing itself as a power system – a materialisation of the balance of hegemonic power – within which Africa has hardly staked a strategic position.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) has called for a paradigm shift, promotion of just trade and regulation of financial markets.(4) NEPAD was drawn up without a critical look at these economic globalisation elements, which shift resources from Africa to rich countries due to asymmetry in power relations (issues such as chronic unjust terms of trade, EU Agricultural subsidies [US 1 billion per day - whereas the majority of Africans live on less than a dollar a day, a cow is subsidised two dollars a day by EU, Africa trade agreements, Africa /US ] Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), WTO trade imbalances, Debt and IMF-World Bank-related development and financial policies need to be addressed).

© Paul Jeffrey / ACT

The response of the Africa Task Force at the WCC
For NEPAD to succeed, the above-mentioned technical and ideological deficits need to be resolved. Churches in Africa and the WCC could play an important role. One area which calls for immediate action by the ecumenical family is to address the so- called "fast- track programmes" (debt cancellation, access to just trade) and, at the general level, assist these countries in preventing and resolving conflicts (peace management in Africa). The WCC Special Focus on Africa Programme 2001-2004 calls for solidarity with Africa:

“" to galvanise churches, national councils of churches, ecumenical organisations, networks, other faith-based communities and specialised bodies inside Africa into concerted action towards realising Africa's journey of hope and to enable Africa's churches to give spiritual leadership in Africa's renewal. It is also to galvanise the global ecumenical movement into accompanying Africa on this journey. Churches and ecumenical organisations who accept to participate in this programme will be those who firmly believe that Africa and Africans can, and are ready to, stir themselves into action that will bring hope, a productive and sustainable future for Africa's citizens."

• To facilitate the development of African thinking, initiatives and synergies for Africa's re-awakening.

• To facilitate the mobilisation of African communities throughout the world to contribute to Africa's New Vision of the Future and to participate in the journey of hope.

One of the strategies mentioned in the WCC's Special Focus on Africa is to engage churches and faith-based communities in Africa in the development and articulation of a proper response and input to the NEPAD leaders. It is now appropriate to organise, in conjunction with the authors of NEPAD, church consultations and workshops in Africa on the involvement of civil society in NEPAD and economic globalisation. It will be a serious mistake to believe that NEPAD could mainly depend on private financing from outside Africa. A serious analysis of the development of domestic markets, creation of a common Africa Union currency out of the current weak currencies in Africa, full utilisation of African human and other resources, and a strong Africa Economic Union are imperative before selling the current proposal of NEPAD to so-called investors. NEPAD should be African people-driven and -owned and not be owned only by heads of states with their so-called partners.

The potential of NEPAD
NEPAD is, however, the only African regional development plan we have at the moment. It is therefore imperative for the people of Africa to refine it, reshape it and mobilise all Africans to lead it to success. Looking critically at economic globalisation it should include actions of labour unions, farmers, social movements, community organisations, religious organisations and academia.

Rogate R. Mshana, programme executive in the Justice, Peace and Creation team of the WCC.

Notes:
1. UNDP, Global Public Goods Financing: New Tools for New Challenges: a policy Dialogue, 2002 ( Ms Inge Kaul ed.) p.4

2. Public Finance is usually considered to have three major branches: the allocation branch, which consists of public policy measures for channeling resources to desired public goods; the distribution branch, responsible for facilitating macroeconomic stability, full employment, and price stability. Today, public goods which were once national public goods – clean air, public health, financial stability and market efficiency – have assumed cross-border dimensions due to forces of globalisation. To provide these goods to local constituencies, policy-makers can no longer rely solely on domestic policy measures, but need to engage in international cooperation.

3. See Richard Dickinson, Economic Globalization: Deepening Challenge for Christians, WCC-JPC, October 1998.

4.See Economic Globalization: A Critical View and An Alternative Vision: Program Implementation, WCC-JPC 2002.

5. See Bits on NEPAD, in Mail and Guardian (Johannesburg, March 8, 2002, posted to the Web March 7, 2002.

© Peter Williams / WCC

Africa has abundant resources and skills.
© Peter Williams / WCC