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| The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) - An Initial Commentary - Ravi Kanbur |
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| 5. Application of the Framework |
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We now proceed to an evaluation of the actions proposed in the NEPAD document.
The evaluation will be illustrative rather than comprehensive, since the
actions in the NEPAD document are themselves meant to be initial statements
for further elaboration and discussion.
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The broad structure of the NEPAD proposals has been outlined in
Section 2.
It should be clear from the discussion above that the proposals under A1,
the Peace and Security Initiative, score very highly on all three criteria
set out. Actions are envisaged in four areas: "prevention, management and
resolution of conflict; peacemaking, peacekeeping and peace enforcement;
post-conflict reconciliation, rehabilitation and reconstruction; and
combating illicit proliferation of small arms, light weapons and landmines."
While there is room for discussion on specifics, the actions proposed are
clearly regional, they are clearly well suited to an organization emanating
from democratic governments, and their direct and indirect impacts on poverty
reduction are significant. It is encouraging, therefore, that the NEPAD
document notes that "The leadership of the New Partnership for Africa's
Development will consider, within six months of its establishment, setting
out detailed and costed measures in each of the four areas above.
The exercise will also include actions required of partners, and the nature
and sources of financing such activities."
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The same is true of key actions under the Democracy and Political
Governance Initiative. These consist of: "a series of commitments by
participating countries to create or consolidate basic governance processes
and practices; an undertaking by participating countries to take the lead in
supporting initiatives that foster good governance; and the
institutionalization of commitments through the New Partnership for Africa's
Development leadership to ensure that the core values of the initiative are
bided by." Again, there is room for discussion and perhaps disagreement on
specifics, but at this level of generality these actions score high on all
three criteria.
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But consider now actions under A2, the Economic and Political Governance
Initiative, which were laid out in
Section 2 as an illustration of the
details in the NEPAD document. While there are clearly some regional
dimensions of these actions, and while it is clear that good economic
management is the sine qua non of medium term growth and poverty reduction,
it is not immediately obvious that the actions listed are particularly suited
to NEPAD's comparative advantage, nor that many of them might not be better
carried out by other organizations such as the African Development Bank.
It is also not clear how country specific agreements with the IFIs will
interact with these region wide initiatives in economic management.
At the very least, it would seem that some further debate and discussion
is needed before a top priority is put on this for allocation of NEPAD's
scarce resources.
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Under A3, Sub-Regional and Regional approaches to development,
the NEPAD document broaches actions that overlap with actions under
other headings as well, but covering "Regional Public Goods":
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"The New Partnership for Africa's Development focuses on the provision
essential regional public goods (such as transport, energy, water, ICT,
disease eradication, environmental preservation, and provision of regional
research capacity), as well as promotion of intra-African trade and
investments."
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While regional public goods clearly fit into the R domain of NEPAD's
comparative advantage, and thus score high on the first criterion,
questions remain on (i) are there other regional organizations that are
doing the job? and (ii) which of these regional public goods has a significant
effect on poverty through combining positive direct and indirect impacts?
Of the examples mentioned in the quote above, regional research capacity
is perhaps best left to the African Development Bank, and the NEPAD document
recognizes this. There are also, of course, numerous sub-regional
organizations for coordinating transport and trade issues. Duplication of
these efforts should be avoided. On poverty, regional efforts at vector borne
disease eradication would clearly score higher on direct impact than,
for example, regional transport initiatives. All of these factors must be
borne in mind when prioritizing between such regional public goods.
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Under Sectoral priorities, NEPAD discusses a wide array of actions,
all of which would be beneficial to African development but only some of
which are particularly well suited to NEPAD's comparative advantage, and
would be of major immediate benefit to the poor. Rather than go through
each of the actions in detail, we will merely take some examples to
illustrate the application of the criteria above.
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Consider, for example, the array of actions under "Investing in Information
and Communication Technologies," which are listed in Section 2.
The first action is to "work with regional agencies such as the
African Telecommunications Union and Africa Connection to design model
policy and legislation for telecommunications reform, and protocols and
templates for e-readiness assessment." Since this is an area where other
regional agencies are already working, the issues of NEPAD's involvement must
be scrutinized carefully to assess its priority. The second and third
actions, "work with regional agencies to build regulatory capacity," and
"establish a network of training and research institutions to build high-level
manpower," are not specified in sufficient detail for evaluation. They are
of course in principle plausible for a regional institution to take up.
But, (i) there are other regional agencies dedicated to these tasks, (ii)
it is not clear how the democratic roots of NEPAD feed in to them and (iii)
the direct poverty impacts are not obvious, although indirect and medium
term benefits could be substantial through growth enhancing investments in
ICT. The fourth action, "promote and accelerate existing projects to connect
schools and youth centers is very much in the N or L domain-it is not clear
that it is the comparative advantage of an institution in the R domain to
prioritize this. Finally, the statement of the fifth action, "work with
development finance institutions in Africa, multilateral initiatives (G-8
Dotforce, UN Task Force) and bilateral donors to establish financial
mechanisms to reduce sector risks," itself highlights that there are other
agencies already deeply involved, and does to clarify what exactly NEPAD as
an institution could bring to the table.
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Many of the actions in the sectoral priorities portion of NEPAD would
thus score low on the three criteria laid out above. But there are other
actions that would indeed score highly. For example, health is a sub-category
under B2, and the following actions are envisaged under this heading:
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- " Strengthen Africa's participation in processes aimed at procuring
affordable drugs, including those involving the international pharmaceutical
companies and international civil society, and explore the use of
alternative delivery systems for essential drugs and supplies;
- Mobilise the resources required to build effective disease interventions
and secure health systems;
- Lead the campaign for increased international financial support for
the struggle against HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases;
- Join forces with other international agencies such as the WHO and
donors to ensure support for the continent is increased by at least
US $10billion per annum;
- Encourage African countries to give higher priority to health in
their own budgets and to phase such increases in expenditure to a level
to be mutually determined;
- Jointly mobilize resources for capacity-building in order to enable
all African countries to improve their health infrastructure and
management."
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In this list of actions there are some for which comparative advantage of
NEPAD relative to other agencies is not necessarily strong. For example,
in the second proposed action, if the systems and interventions are primarily
national it is not clear that a regional institution has a comparative
advantage raising resources for them. Similarly, while of course improving
of health infrastructure is to be welcomed as a general medium term goal,
the sixth action seems like a general exhortation-it is not clear that this
is a leading candidate for the scarce resources represented by NEPAD's
special comparative advantage, and there are other agencies already working
on this.
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However, the first, third, fourth and sixth sets of actions listed above
would score very highly on the three criteria. These are actions which make
best use of NEPAD as a regional entity and a credible democratic voice for
Africa, where it is unlikely that other Africa-wide agencies could be as
effective, and where the direct and indirect impacts on the health of the
poor are very great. The global debate on the prices charged by international
pharmaceutical prices for key drugs is directly crucial to the well being
of millions of poor people across Africa. Northern governments are under
pressure from their own civil societies to enact various legislations with
respect to this issue. What Africa needs in this debate is a credible voice
that can represent all of Africa, and be representative of the people of
Africa. NEPAD fits the bill. The allocation of resources to give NEPAD the
technical support it needs in this debate would therefore get high marks
on our criteria. The same is true for the campaign to increase international
financial support for an attack on communicable diseases. Moreover, it is
well known that a major problem in Africa is that African countries' own
health budgets are highly skewed in favor of the urban rich. NEPAD's
development and operation of an Africa wide mechanism of mutual monitoring
would draw on NEPAD's twin sources of comparative advantage-its regional
character and its roots in representative government.
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Consider now the third category of actions proposed under NEPAD,
Mobilising Resources. Some care is again needed here in separating out
those actions which are primarily national in nature and over which NEPAD
can have little influence, or which are best done by other regional agencies,
and those actions which can truly capitalize on NEPAD's comparative advantage.
Let us start with C1, the Capital Flows Initiative. NEPAD, with its special
authority, can play a strong role in fashioning a case for deeper and broader
Debt Relief (a sub-category of actions under C1), while at the same time
developing mutual monitoring mechanisms for ensuring that the proceeds of
debt relief do indeed find their way directly to the poor. This is
particularly true given a perception in some quarters that the international
debt relief initiative is stuck at too timid a level.
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However, there is less of a strong case for NEPAD giving high priority to
ODA issues in general (another sub-category under C1). It is not clear that
the issue is sufficiently well crystallized in the international domain in
such a way that NEPAD could play a special role. Other agencies such as ECA
should perhaps take the lead in such issues as responses to the PRSP
framework, and the NEPAD document recognizes this. On encouraging private
capital flows (the final sub-category under C1), the actions suggested in
the NEPAD document are all perfectly reasonable, but it is not clear that
they have a priority claim on NEPAD's scarce capital, and there are surely
other agencies which have better technical expertise to carry out tasks such
as reviewing investment related legislation or enhancing capacity of countries
to implement PPPs.
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The Market Access Initiative, C2, similarly has a mix of actions that are on
the face of it either very well suited to NEPAD's comparative advantage and
to the poverty reduction objective, or not as well suited. It is hard to
think that NEPAD could develop sufficient sectoral expertise, for example
in mining, to achieve very specific sectoral goals. Others, such as "develop
new industries, or upgrade existing ones, where African countries have
comparative advantages, including agro-based industries, energy and mineral
resource-based industries," seem far too general, and in any case squarely
in the national domain, to not have a priority claim on NEPAD resources.
However, the objective that "if a new round of multilateral trade negotiations
is started, it must recognize and provide for the African continent's special
concerns, needs and interests in future WTO rules," is clearly one in which
NEPAD should take a lead role, supported by technical agencies. This is
because it is important in international negotiations for Africa to speak
not only with one voice but a voice that has credibility because it
represents the will of the African people through democratically elected
heads of state.
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Let us finally consider, as an application of the framework developed in
this paper, the programmes that the NEPAD document itself argues should be
"fast-tracked". As noted above there are four of these-Communicable Diseases,
ICT, Debt Reduction and Market Access. Of these four, the framework developed
here would strongly support Communicable Diseases and Debt Reduction as
priorities for NEPAD. The three questions posed in the criteria set out
in the previous section would be answered as follows. (i) These actions
are particularly well suited to a regional organization and other regional
organizations in Africa are not doing them particularly well or at all.
(ii) In making a continent wide argument for debt reduction, in developing
monitoring mechanisms and protocols for prudent use of the proceeds of debt
relief, and for presenting and defending the interests of Africa vis a vis
international pharmaceutical companies in the court of world opinion, an
African organization rooted in democratic values has a special comparative
advantage. (iii) Both debt relief and health advances in communicable
diseases will have a direct beneficial impact on the well being of the poor,
as well as indirect and medium term benefits through the overall climate for
economic growth. Debt Reduction and Communicable Diseases would therefore
score high on all three criteria. But the same is not true of ICT and Market
Access. ICT has been discussed above. Market Access is a very large
sub-category, some components of which would not score high but others,
particularly those focusing on WTO and other specifically international
issues where a democratic voice from Africa will be effective, would
indeed be prioritized in the framework developed in this paper.
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