| 2. The Structure and Content of NEPAD |
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The basic document of NEPAD derives from an earlier document,
"A New African Initiative (NAI)", itself a merger of two parent documents,
"The Millennium Partnership for the African Recovery Programme (MAP)",
and the "Omega Plan." The NEPAD document starts with three opening sections
which introduce the document, and set the stage by reviewing the place of
Africa in today's world, and stating the new political will and resolve of
African leaders in the context of the spread of democracy. It then moves
rapidly to set out the strategy, to a discussion of programmes of action,
and to an implementation plan.
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As stated in the NEPAD document, the African "Strategy for Achieving
Sustainable Development in the 21st Century," has the following structure:
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A. Conditions for Sustainable Development
- Peace, Security, Democracy and Political governance
- Economic and Corporate Governance
- Sub-regional and Regional Approaches to Development
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B. Sectoral Priorities
- Infrastructure
- Human Resource Development
- Agriculture
- Environment
- Culture
- Science and Technology Platforms
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C. Mobilizing Resources
- Capital Flows
- Market Access
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The Programme of Action picks up the themes and develops them, but the
discussion is at a fairly general level. As an illustration, the actions proposed under Economic
and Corporate Governance
are as follows:
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- A Task team from Ministries of Finance and Central banks will be
commissioned to review economic and corporate governance practices in the
various countries and regions, and make recommendations on appropriate
standards and codes of good practice for consideration by the Heads of State
Implementation Committee within six months.
- The Implementation Committee will refer its recommendation to African
states for implementation.
- The Implementation Committee will give high priority to public financial
management. Countries will develop a programme for improving public and
financial management and targets, and assessment mechanisms will also be
set.
- The Heads of State Implementation Committee will mobilize resources
for capacity building to enable all countries to comply with the mutually
agreed minimum standards of codes of good practice.
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Under Sectoral Priorities, Human Resource Development, for example, is further
divided into three sub initiatives: Poverty Reduction, Education, Reversing
the Brain Drain, and Health. The actions under Poverty Reduction are stated
as follows:
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- Require that country plans prepared for initiatives in this programme
of action assess their poverty reduction impact, both before and after
implementation.
- Work with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and
the United Nations (UN) agencies to accelerate implementation and adoption
of the Comprehensive Development Framework, the Poverty Reduction Strategy
and related approaches.
- Establish a gender task team to ensure that the specific issues faced
by poor women are addressed in the poverty reduction strategies, of the New
Partnership for Africa's Development.
- Establish a task team to accelerate the adoption of participatory and
decentralized processes for the provision on infrastructural and social
services.
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As another illustration of the sub-sectoral strategy, here are the actions
under the Information and Communications Technology Initiative, which falls
under Infrastructure:
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- Work with regional agencies such as the African Telecommunications
Union and Africa Connection to design model policy legislation for
telecommunications reform, and protocols and templates for e-readiness
assessments.
- Work with the regional agencies to build regulatory capacity.
- Establish a network of training and research institutions to build
high-level manpower.
- Promote and accelerate existing projects to connect schools and youth
centres.
- Work with development finance institutions in Africa, multilateral
initiatives (G-8 DotForce, UN Task Force) and bilateral donors to establish
financial mechanisms to mitigate and reduce sector risks.
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The Mobilizing Resources part of the strategy is subdivided into the
Capital Flows Initiative--which is further subdivided into increasing
domestic resource mobilization, debt relief, ODA reform and private capital
flows-and Market Access. As a final example that gives a flavor of the
content of the NEPAD document, the actions under the Private Capital Flows
Initiative are:
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- Establish a task team to a carry out audits of investment-related
legislation and regulation, and with a view to risk reduction and
harmonization within Africa.
- Carry out a needs assessment of and feasibility study on financial
instruments to mitigate risks associated with doing business in Africa.
- Establish an initiative to enhance the capacity of countries to
establish PPPs.
- Establish a Financial Market Integration Task Force that will
serve to fast-track financial market integration through the establishment
of an internationally competitive legislative and regulatory framework and
the creation of a single African trading platform.
- Additional debt relief and ODA.
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The above brief illustrations of the content of the NEPAD should give a
sense of how it is conceptualized and structured, the range of issues it
covers, and the level of specifics in it. We turn now to an initial commentary
on the document.
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