[Reader-list] Critique of NEPAD

[sumayar]

Dear all on the Reader List

There has been much talk by certain African  governments about the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), but many African intellectuals have critiqued the project, Read on.

Abu Latif

_____________________________________________________________


(Codesria is the main association of African intellectuals, so this is quite
a remarkable statement; Third World Network-Africa is in Accra, and has been
the loudest international advocacy voice on African issues.)

DECLARATION ON AFRICA'S DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES

(Adopted at end of Joint CODESRIA- TWN-AFRICA Conference on Africa's
Development Challenges in the Millennium, Accra 23-26 April, 2002)

1. From the 23 to 26 April, 2002, we, African scholars and activist
intellectuals working in academic institutions, civil society organisations
and policy institutions from 20 countries in Africa, as well as colleagues
and friends from Asia, Europe, North America and South America met at a
conference jointly organised by the Council for Development and Social
Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and the Third World Network-Africa
(TWN-Africa) to deliberate on Africa's developmental challenges in the new
millennium.

2. Our deliberations covered such issues as Africa's initiatives for
addressing development; Africa and the world trading system; mobilising
financing for development in Africa; citizenship, democracy and development;
education, health social services and development, and gender equity and
equality in development.

Challenges to the space of Africa's own thinking on development

3. In our deliberations, we recalled the series of initiatives by Africans
themselves aimed at addressing the developmental challenges of Africa, in
particular the Lagos Plan of Action and the companion African Alternative
Framework for Structural Adjustment.  Each time, these initiatives were
counteracted and ultimately undermined by policy frameworks developed from
outside the continent and imposed on African countries.   Over the past
decades, a false consensus has been generated around the neo-liberal
paradigm promoted through the Bretton Woods Institutions and the World Trade
Organisation.  This stands to crowd out the rich tradition of Africa's own
alternative thinking on development.  It is in this context that the
proclaimed African initiative, the New Partnership for Africa's Development
(NEPAD), which was developed in the same period as the United Nations
Economic Commission for Africa's Compact for African Recovery, as well as
the World Bank's Can Africa Claim the 21st Century?, were discussed.

4. The meeting noted the uneven progress of democratisation and in
particular of the expansion of space for citizen expression and
participation.  It also acknowledged the contribution of citizen's struggles
and activism to this expansion of the political space, and for putting
critical issues of development on the public agenda

External and internal obstacles to Africa's economic development

5. The meeting noted that the challenges confronting Africa's development
come from two inter-related sources: (a) constraints imposed by the hostile
international economic and political order within which our economies
operate; and (b) domestic weaknesses deriving from socio-economic and
political structures and neo-liberal structural adjustment policies.

6. The main elements of the hostile global order include, first, the fact
that African economies are integrated into the global economy as exporters
of primary commodities and importers of manufactured products, leading to
terms of trade losses.  Reinforcing this, secondly, have been the policies
of liberalisation, privatisation and deregulation as well as an unsound
package of macro-economic policies imposed through structural adjustment
conditionality by the World Bank and the IMF.  These have now been
institutionalised within the WTO through rules, agreements and procedures,
which are biased against our countries.  Finally, the just mentioned
external and internal policies and structures have combined to generate
unsustainable and unjustifiable debt burden which has crippled Africa's
economies and undermined the capacity of Africa's ownership of strategies
for development .

7. The external difficulties have exacerbated the internal structural
imbalances of our economies, and, together with neo-liberal structural
adjustment policies, inequitable socio-economic and political structures,
have led the to disintegration of our economies and increased social and
gender inequity.  In particular, our manufacturing industries have been
destroyed; agricultural production (for food and other domestic needs is in
crisis; public services have been severely weakened; and the capacity of
states  and governments in Africa to make and implement policies in support
of balanced and equitable national development emasculated.  The costs
associated with these have fallen disproportionately on marginalized and
subordinated groups of our societies, including workers, peasants, small
producers. The impact  has been excessively severe on women and children.

8. Indeed, the developments noted above have reversed policies and
programmes and have dismantled institutions in place since independence to
create and expand integrated production across and between our economies in
agriculture, industry, commerce, finance, and social services.  These were
programmes and institutions which have, in spite of their limitations,
sought to address the problems of weak internal markets and fragmented
production structures as well as economic imbalances and social inequities
within and between nations inherited from colonialism, and to redress the
inappropriate integration of our economies in the global order.  The
associated social and economic gains, generated over this period have been
destroyed.

9. The above informed our reflections on the NEPAD.  We concluded that,
while many of its stated goals may be well-intentioned, the development
vision and economic measures that it canvases for the realisation of these
goals are flawed.  As a result, NEPAD will not contribute to addressing the
developmental problems mentioned above.  On the contrary, it will reinforce
the hostile external environment and the internal weaknesses that constitute
the major obstacles to Africa's development.  Indeed, in certain areas like
debt, NEPAD steps back from international goals that have been won through
global mobilisation and struggle.

10. The most fundamental flaws of NEPAD, which reproduce the central
elements of the World Bank's Can Africa Claim the 21st Century and the ECA's
Compact for African Recovery, include:

(a) the neo-liberal economic policy framework at the heart of the plan, and
which repeats the structural adjustment policy packages of the preceding two
decades and over-looks the disastrous effects of those policies;
(b) the fact that in spite of its proclaimed recognition of the central role
of the African people to the plan, the African people have not played any
part in the conception, design and formulation of the NEPAD;
(c) notwithstanding its stated concerns for social and gender equity, it
adopts the social and economic measures that have contributed to the
marginalisation of women
(d) that in spite of claims of African origins, its main targets are foreign
donors, particularly in the G8
(e) its vision of democracy is defined by the needs of creating a functional
market;
(f) it under-emphasises the external conditions fundamental to Africa's
developmental crisis, and thereby does not promote any meaningful measure to
manage and restrict the effects of this environment on Africa development
efforts.  On the contrary, the engagement that is seeks with institutions
and processes like the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, the United States
Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, the Cotonou Agreement, will further lock
Africa's economies disadvantageously into this environment;
(g) the means for mobilisation of resources will further the disintegration
of African economies that we have witnessed at the hands of structural
adjustment and WTO rules;

Call for Action

11. To address the developmental problems and challenges identified above,
we call for action at the national, continental and international levels to
implement the measures described below.

12. In relation to the external environment, action must be taken towards
stabilisation of commodity prices; reform of the international financial
system (to prevent debt, exchange rate instability and capital flow
volatility) as well as of the World Bank and the IMF; an end to IMF/World
Bank structural adjustment programmes; and fundamental changes to the
existing agreements of the WTO regime,  as well as stop the attempts to
expand the scope to this regime to new areas including investment,
competition and government procurement. Most pressing of all, Africa's debt
must be cancelled.

13. At the local, national and regional levels, development policy must
promote agriculture, industry, services including health and public
education, and must be protected and supported through appropriate trade,
investment and macro-economic policy measures.  A strategy for financing
must seek to mobilise and build on internal and intra-African resources
through imaginative savings measures; reallocation of expenditure away from
wasteful items including excessive military expenditure, corruption and
mismanagement; creative use of remittances of Africans living abroad;
corporate taxation; retention and re-investment of foreign profits; and the
prevention of capital flight, and the leakage of resources through practices
of tax evasion practised by foreign investors and local elites.  Foreign
investment while necessary, must be carefully balanced and selected to suit
national objectives.

14. Above all, these measures require the reconstitution of the
developmental state:  a state for which social equity, social inclusion,
national unity and respect for human rights form the basis of economic
policy; a state which actively promotes, and nurtures the productive sectors
of the economy; actively engages appropriately in the equitable and balanced
allocation and distribution of resources among sectors and people; and most
importantly a state that is democratic and which integrates people's control
over decision making at all levels in the management, equitable use and
distribution of social resources.

The Challenge for African scholars and activist intellectuals

15. Recognising that, by raising anew the question of Africa's development
as an Africa-wide concern, NEPAD has brought to the fore the question of
Africa's autonomous initiatives for development, we will engage with the
issues raised in NEPAD as part of our efforts to contribute to the debate
and discussions on African development.

16. In support of our broader commitment to contribute to addressing
Africa's development challenges, we undertake to work both collectively and
individually, in line with our capacities, skills and institutional
location, to promote a renewed continent-wide engagement on Africa's own
development initiatives.  To this end, we shall deploy our research,
training and advocacy skills and capacities to contribute to the generation
and dissemination of knowledge of the issues at stake; engage with and
participate in the mobilisation of social groups around their interests and
appropriate strategies of development; and engage with governments and
policy institutions at local, national, regional and continental levels.  We
shall continue our collaboration with our colleagues in the global movement.

17. Furthermore, we call,

(a) for the reassertion of the primacy of the question and paradigm of
national and regional development on the agenda of social discourse and
intellectual engagement and advocacy;;
(b) on Africa's scholars and activist intellectuals within African and in
the Diaspora, to join forces with social groups whose interests and needs
are central to the development of Africa;
(c) African scholars and activist intellectuals and organisations to direct
their research and advocacy to some of the pressing questions that confront
African policy and decision making at international levels (in particular
negotiations in the WTO and under the Cotonou agreement), and domestically
and regionally;
(d) upon our colleagues in the global movement, to strengthen our common
struggles, in solidarity. We ask our colleagues in the North to intervene
with their governments on behalf of our struggles, and our colleagues in the
South to strengthen South-South co-operation.

18. We pledge ourselves to carry forward the positions and conclusions of
this conference.  And we encourage CODESRIA and TWN-Africa to explore,
together with other interested parties, mechanisms and processes for
follow-up to the deliberations and conclusions of this conference.

Accra, April 26, 2002.



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