Africa and Development: Challenges in the new Millennium. The Nepad Debate
Carole Reckinger - October 2007 (published in Progress In Development Studies)
Adésinà, J.O., Graham, Yao and Olukoshi A., editors 2005: Africa and Development: Challenges in the new Millennium. The Nepad Debate. Dakar : Codesria ; London : Zed Books, xvi + 288 pp. £ 65 cloth, £ 19.99 paper. ISBN: 9781842775943 cloth, ISBN: 9781842775950 paper.
When asked what Nepad is, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo replied: ´Africa’s youngest wife and as you know people talk about the youngest wife more than they talk about all the other wives in the house’ (ALRN, 2003: 3). Indeed, the launch of Nepad (New Partnership for Africa’s Development) and its strategic framework document has generated countless scholarly articles on virtually every aspect of its strategic framework. Released in 2001 through the merging of two plans for the economic regeneration of Africa (the Millennium Partnership for Africa’s Recovery Program, inspired by President Thabo Mbeki and the OMEGA plan of Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade) as well as the ‘Compact for Africa’s Recovery’ developed by the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), Nepad claims to be the cure for Africa’s underdevelopment and reverse the scenario in which Africa is the beggar to Africa becoming the master of its own destiny. Its overall aim is a commitment by African leaders to place the continent on an accelerated path of social, technological and economic development. As a political statement however, it has been widely criticized as failing to include a rigorous analysis of Africa’s developmental constraints. The important contribution of Africa and Development: Challenges in the New Millennium is that it is a major attempt by African scholars and policy makers to evaluate the meaning of Nepad in concrete terms.
Since Nepad was launched in 2001, a central theme is that Africans must take control of their own destiny. The collection of 11 essays in this book has emerged from a joint conference on the key development challenges facing Africa at the dawn of the new millennium. The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and Third World Network Africa (TWR-Africa), both independent research organizations that operate with the goal of facilitating research and promoting the exchange of information and views among African researchers, put together this meeting in 2002. Organized with the vision to critically engage with past, current and future challenges facing Africa, it was attended by over 100 African academics and activists. Since its launch, Nepad has been promoted as being based on the principles of African ownership over development issues. Considering that this book has developed through a conference attended both by African scholars and activists from all kinds of backgrounds, it exemplifies this approach as well as showing on an academic level how such African ownership can manifest itself. The conference in fact managed to create a framework for an experimental joint discussion between African academics and the growing community of civil society intellectuals on a scale that does not frequently happen in Africa.
The procedural and substantive controversies around Nepad form the starting point for a wider discussion about Africa’s development challenges, both in contemporary and historical perspectives. The book reflects the broad ideological and discursive visions and addresses key questions about Nepad’s ability to integrate Africa with the global economy, bringing about regional development as well as overcoming the challenges of poverty. The book addresses these topics in three parts. The first section is concerned with an assessment of the Nepad document. The first chapter written by Adésinà is highly critical of the neo-liberal foundations of Nepad and gives a good insight into a broad range of criticisms of the partnership. This view is balanced out by the following contribution, where Taylor argues more along a frequently repeated view of blaming endogenous agents for Africa’s development failure. He explores the extent to which the forces driving Nepad represent part of an ‘emerging transnational elite’ and argues for an unrestricted commitment to global free trade at the same time as seeking a fairer, more equitable global regime that delivers development for Africa. The final contribution in this first part, written by Maloka attempts to build a bridge between Nepad and its critics.
The following section is concerned with the main sectoral challenges in Africa’s quest for sustained development. This part uses the Nepad document as the discursive premise but goes on to advance specific policy priorities and, in some cases, alternatives for addressing Africa’s development. Moyo’s chapter for instance examines the efficacy of Nepad’s agricultural strategy, and criticizes the document for not providing any coherent industrial strategy. He reminds us that the ‘Nepad agricultural strategy is entangled in an institutional framework … that has… overseen the demise of African agriculture’ and offers an alternative framework that requires an ‘integrated development strategy’ driven by core elements such as land reform, rural infrastructure development and regional integration. Dot Keet in the same section examines the trade dimensions within Nepad as well as their direct and indirect implications. He criticizes the preoccupation with trade without development and notes that Nepad attaches no importance to the active and proactive role of the kind of regional and continental development funds and public financial instruments that the Plan for African Economic Community (AEC) and the African Alternative Framework to SAP’s (AAF-SAP) propose. In the remaining three chapters, an industrial policy for African countries is mapped out by Sangare and information/technology issues as well as educational and scientific policies are critically analyzed by Ya’U and Chenntouf respectively..
The third part addresses the financing of Africa’s development. Randriamaro focuses on the gender dynamics and the failure of Nepad to address issues facing poor women. She calls for a ‘new partnership for women’s economic empowerment’ and the advancement of the interests of the poor more generally. Uche’s chapter examines the experience of the ECOWAS Fund for Cooperation, Compensation and Development as an example of the effort to develop local institutions for development financing and condemns the ECOWAS history as a failure. In the final chapter, Anyemedu examines the problems associated with the financing of Africa’s development through aid flows and the antinomies of such a ‘development’ strategy. He furthermore examines private capital flows and domestic savings as sources of development financing and challenges the thinking that informed the claim in the Nepad document that what Africa needs is to attract more private capital funds. He outlines specific steps that could be taken in helping to deliver on the declaratory statements and sentiments expressed in Nepad, such as the need for Africa to rely on its own resources if it wants to be fully in charge of its own destiny.
The book has two main strengths. First, although most of the analysis of the collection is critical of the discourse and prognoses that underscore Nepad, its approach is varied and does not argue along one ideological line. The book is a collection of diverse ideas with no single discursive framework or ideological commitment towards Nepad or the development question. Opinions on both sides of the development and Nepad debate as well as the equally reflected concerns, scepticisms and optimism make this book so objective and interesting. A second strength is while the book does carry the Nepad debate as its sub title, the concern of the collection is much wider and the issues covered represent an engagement of the intellectual and policy challenges of development alternatives in Africa. The reader is provided with a rich texture of diverse opinion, situating Nepad in the wider development framework.
African Labour Research Network (ALRN). 2003: Nepad: A new partnership between Rider and Horse? http://www.alrn.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=236&CAMSSID=41aaac291dab745d6aee2b5b9d4a7bd3
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