Fw: [BDPA-Africa] African intellectuals divided on NEPAD: The EastAfrican online

["Cor Groenendijk" <groenend at antenna.nl>]

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From: "MDouglas" <dasha at clubinternetk.com>
To: <BDPA-Africa at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, May 13, 2002 9:42 PM
Subject: [BDPA-Africa] African intellectuals divided on NEPAD: The
EastAfrican online


 "Is Nepad the Answer to Africa's Problems?

 "During a three-day "African Forum for Envisioning Africa by African
 Scholars" in Nairobi [in late April], a section of civil society
 representatives
 and scholars said that Nepad lacked legitimacy as it was agreed upon by
 African presidents and sold to Western economic powers for funding without
 consulting citizens, parliaments and the civil society. "

 Also ... NEPAD's "lacking consistency in gender matters."

 The East African Newspaper - published by The Nation Group
 http://www.nationaudio.com/News/EastAfrican/current/

 6 MAY 2002 (Web version)

 AFRICAN INTELLECTUALS are divided on the legitimacy
 of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad).

 ===================================
 Is Nepad the Answer to Africa's Problems?

 By WAMBUA SAMMY
 SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

 AFRICAN INTELLECTUALS are divided on the legitimacy of the
 New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad).

 During a three-day "African Forum for Envisioning Africa by African
 Scholars" in Nairobi last week, a section of civil society representatives
 and scholars said that Nepad lacked legitimacy as it was agreed upon
 by African presidents and sold to Western economic powers for
 funding without consulting citizens, parliaments and the civil society.

 "[Thabo] Mbeki told Europeans that it [Nepad] could start even before
 African leaders had been consulted," said Dr Dani Nabudere of the Afrika
 Study Centre, Uganda. He was referring to South African President Mbeki's
 meetings with Western leaders including Britain's Tony Blair, to drum up
 support for Nepad.

 The Genoa G-8 Summit, Dr Nabudere said, adopted Mbeki's idea and called it
 an "Africa Plan," changing it to focus on certain African success stories.

 The $64 billion Nepad expects to be raised locally and from the West
 annually in order to take off, Dr Nabudere said, would never translate into
 development unless the "current structures" were changed.

 However South Africa's Electoral Commission chair Brigalia Bam said
 President Mbeki did not have to consult the civil society and all Africans.

 "He was responding to a crisis of unemployment and poverty in South
 Africa.... something should be done. There should be an alternative if
Nepad
 is rejected," she said.

 Defending Nepad, Prof Gerishon Ikiara from the University of Nairobi blamed
 political scientists for being pessimistic when analysing enterprises
 involving African governments, which, he said, must be given a chance.

 "Africa is still blaming imperialists when none can point out to me how an
 imperialist is preventing Kenya from undertaking certain endeavours," he
 said. To Prof Ikiara, the West could never see Africa as a competitor
 because its share of global trade was a mere 2 per cent.

 Prof Shadrack Gutto, a Kenyan who teaches law at Witwatersrand University,
 South Africa, said Nepad was not an alien initiative to be thrown away. Its
 presidential peer mechanism for ensuring there was good governance in
 Africa, he said, had to be made to work "instead of condemning it "from our
 libraries."

 Keynote speaker, Prof Adedeji Adebayo, accused the West and international
 institutions of frustrating efforts to resuscitate African economies.

 "Helping Africa is always a refrain and gratuitous rhetoric at UN sessions
 and international conferences."

 Although Kenya's Prof Peter Anyang Nyong'o was not for the rejection of the
 initiative, he was critical of its drivers. Nepad's strategy of renewing
 Africa's growth through "a competent liberal state in Africa and a friendly
 "capital providing" world market, in which donors and investors will have
 vested interests in creating wealth for Africa," he said, was only okay on
 paper.

 "Where is the competent and democratic state going to come from in Africa?"
 he wondered. The best the "Nepad crowd" could hope for, he added, was a
form
 of benevolent leadership arising out of the "presidential authoritarian
 regimes that now claim to be democracies all over the continent."

 As the UN Undersecretary General and Executive Secretary of the Economic
 Commission for Africa, ECA, Prof Adedeji was instrumental in five
 initiatives to jump-start Africa's economic growth, all of which were
 stifled by Western donors and financial institutions.

 The efforts aimed at creating regional home markets through regional
 economic integration blocs principally through the Lagos Plan of Action,
 (LPA) of 1980 and the Final Act of Lagos. These were largely ignored by
 African leaders he called donor democrats, and their donor partners,
 whereupon, in 1989, Prof Adedeji and his team came up with proposals to
 counteract the the World Bank-fronted Structural Adjustment Programmes
 (Saps). They were also swept aside by the same lot.

 According to Prof Adedeji, the Nepad initiative is top-heavy, being a
 presidents' initiative, which did not bother to seriously consult with
 stakeholders and key actors such as parliaments.

 Maintaining that Africa had suffered "benign neglect" by the "Development
 Merchant System" (Western donors and financial institutions), Prof Adedeji
 was sceptical that Nepad would take off on the strength of its support.

 "Is the welcome being accorded to Nepad by the Development Merchant
 System the beginning of a new approach to Africa? Is it because Nepad
 is in line with the Development Merchant System or has there been a
 change of heart?" he wondered.

 "The Nepad actors must become real partners in development without
 pushing their own agendas in the process."

 For Nepad to succeed, he said, it had to recognise the LPA cornerstones
 of self-reliance, sustenance, governance and progressive eradication of
 poverty. Aid, he said, had failed to solve Africa's problems in four
decades
 and was not about to.

 "No Marshal Plan will work in Africa's underdeveloped markets. It worked in
 Germany because of Germans' hard work and intellectual resources."

 "Africa requires building anew; not rehabilitation or reconstruction," was
 Prof Adedeji's parting shot.

 Nepad was also accused of "lacking consistency in gender matters."

 "It fails almost completely to recognise or address the major issue of
 gender inequality and discrimination, and the oppression of women
 that lies hidden and unacknowledged in the Nepad goals and objectives,"
 said Ms SARA LONGWE from Zambia.

 [Paragraph 69 of the Nepad document talks of making "progress
 towards gender equality and empowering women by eliminating
 gender disparities in the enrolment in primary and secondary education by
 2005.]

 Kenya's Mazingira Institute, the African Academy of Sciences and the
 Regional Office (Horn and East Africa) of the Heinrich Boell Foundation
 organised the forum.




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