LAOLU AKANDE

NEW YORK

In order for it to accomplish the Millenium Development Goals, MDGs, as set by the United Nations and recently reviewed at the World Summit held last month in New York, Africa as a whole will need about $110b per year.

And according to Professor Firmino Mucavele, the new Chief Executive Officer of the New Partnership for Africa's Development, NEPAD, Africans themselves are putting down the substantial part of that sum.

He spoke last week at the United Nations, at a panel discussion organised by the UN Office of Special Adviser on Africa, OSAA, on the sidelines of the ongoing UN General Asembly debate focussed on Africa.

Opening the discussion, the moderator and Ag. Director of UN-OSAA, Mr. Ejeviome Eloho Otobo, from Nigeria, noted that the “idea of the panel is to get an insight into the evolving perspectives of the multi-stakeholders with respect to the status of the implementation of NEPAD.” The panelists were drawn from African government, civil society groups including business and media as stakeholders of NEPAD.

According to Mucavele: “We have planned our budget, our minimum budget if we are to achieve the minimum MDG’s by 2015.” He added that Africa needs $110 billion per year “for us to be able to move a little bit in such a way that countries can approach to the level of 7 per cent economic growth and necessary condition for us to reduce poverty.”

The new NEPAD CEO who hails from Mozambique also announced that from that amount, already African countries are putting down $37 billion.

“For the first time we have countries in Africa putting down a big figure doing business. That is a success. Also we have the private sector putting down $30 billion, this makes $67 billion, we still have a gap of $43 billion,” according to him.

It is the balance that he said Africa was asking from “our partners. And if we look I never said donors, I said partners.”

In a similar vein, in his report to the ongoing General Assembly on the progress of NEPAD implementation, the Secretary-General of the UN Mr. Kofi Annan, estimated that Africa needed $37B in Official Development Assistance in 2006, $52B by 2010 and $84B in 2015. But the UN Secretary General noted however the exact increamental ODA needs for each of the years are $18B in 2006, $33B in 2010 and $65B in 2015.

Mucavele explained that NEPAD “strategically is a mechanism under which we can have dialogue, that’s why we are here because we have NEPAD. For the first time, Africa is speaking to Africans and to other people outside Africa.”

Furthermore he believes that Africa already has something to offer the world since NEPAD was established.

According to him, through NEPAD Africa is now the only continent that has a mechanism that evaluated itself. In an apparent reference to the APRM, Mucavele said “no other continent has a mechanism that evaluates itself, no other continent does evaluation in political arena, OECD does evaluation, peer review, but only in the financial area. We do in the institutional area, in the political and also in democracy. That we should consider as a progress for Africa.”

Speaking earlier at the panel discussion, Dr. Joseph O. Okpaku, a Nigerian economist based in New York, where he is President of Telecom Africa noted that “even if we do not create the Africa of our dream we must at least create a wealthy foundation so that those who come after us could begin to do that.” He lamented that it is unfortunate that private dialogue amongst people of like minds and common interest is almost virtually impossible and “the decorum of public dialogue often tends to undermine or prevent candor at the level that I think is critical.”

He said on the fourth anniversary of NEPAD, “Africans must begin to learn to talk to themselves openly, bluntly with enthusiasm and just simply ignore whoever might be listening so that we can discuss the important things that we must do.”

According to Okpaku, to create development, you must define what you mean by development. “You cannot go to the airport and say you want a flight to anywhere because you will go no where and I think at some point in looking at Africa’s future we must begin to define in clear terms what our objectives are, we must define that African future that we are trying arrive at and we must also quantify the resources that we need to get there.”

The Nigerian born Economist stated the compelling need to begin hearing “African voices in the process of African development, because at the end of the day, if Africa succeeds or fails we will be the ones who will be blamed for it and rightly so.”

Even if it fails, Okpaku insisted that Africans must begin “to beg if we have to, for space, for the right to mastermind Africa’s own future, for the right to try and fail if we do, but be propelled by the possibility of success.” He noted that it is wrong for any people to shape and define their aspiration purely on the expectations of other people.

Noting that there are different kinds of development including “development by proxy,” which Okpaku said is one where “somebody else sings you a lullaby and you just go to sleep while they shape your future and one day they hand you what they presumably have created for you.”

He said the current target of Africa’s dream is so low, because as he outs it, “it runs below the radar screen of Africa’s best minds.”

However Mucavele in what seemed like a response to Okpaku’s remarks asserted that NEPAD calls for African ownership and responsibility, stressing that “no body will solve our problems, nobody will bring us solution, unless we start with our own solutions, then someone will help us.”

Adding that NEPAD is all about the protection and promotion of democracy and human rights and the full participation of all stakeholders, the professor of agricultural economics observed that the NEPAD is for self reliance, and reduced dependence on aid, through strengthening of the private sector.

He disclosed that an African Plan of Action has just been completed, prepared by regional economic communities. He said Ministers of Finance for all the 53 countries reviewed it in Addis Ababa, and experts were called in Midrand, South Africa to refine the plans which is Africa’s strategic plan 2004 -2007.

Said he : “We call the African Action Plan, Mini-mini program. This means, we are not going below that program. We presented that program to the African partnership forum which is a gathering of the G8 personal representatives of the Heads of State and Government, this is where we had OECD, where we had the steering committee of NEPAD, where we had the multi-sectoral and financial institutions like the World Bank, the IMF, this is where we had all the partners.”

Mucavele, who was instrumental to the drafting of the proposal that led to the formation of NEPAD by some African presidents including Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo disclosed that already a budget to actualize Africa’s development at least starting with the MDGs, has already been made.

Robot  Villager

# 1 Link to the article is here Posted by Robot| 21.10.2005 01:20

Guest

# 2 the question is, how many Africans know what NEPAD stands for? And Okpaku is right about proxy development-he who pays the piper... Posted by Guest| 21.10.2005 19:23