NEPAD [part 1]

part 2

Jimi Adesina on Nepad 'as a class project' 
 
(As much as anyone today, Jimi carries forward the traditions of African
liberation political theory, as this long but really worthwhile analysis
shows. Email me offlist at pbond@sn.apc.org if you want the full version
with endnotes. I'm off now to hear the beginning of his all-day lecture on
African revolutionary thought -- for an excellent group of southern African
soc.mvt. leadesr -- at the NUM Training Centre in Yeoville, which people are
welcome to wander in for if you're in Jo'burg -- on your way to the protests
at the nearby US consulate...)

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NEPAD and the Challenge of Africa's Development: towards the political
economy of a discourse

by

'Jìmí O. Adésínà

Department of Sociology,

Rhodes University, Grahamstown.

E-mail: J.Adesina@ru.ac.zaBo

-----------------

Abstract

The critical challenge of development for Africa in the 21st century is an
issue around which there is considerable consensus. There is, however,
little consensus on the nature of the crisis, the required development
framework and trajectory or the 'desired state'. In the context of the
debate, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) has been
promoted by its authors and sponsors as Africa's development blueprint for
meeting its development challenges. NEPAD, the paper argues represents a
departure from previous continental development agenda for Africa, most
notably the Lagos Plan of Action (LPA) and the African Alternative Framework
to Structural Adjustment Programme (AAF-SAP).

Much of the criticism of NEPAD have focused on how it is driven by the
neoliberal discourse associated with the Bretton Woods Institutions, and how
damaging these policy instruments have been to Africa in the last twenty
years. What has not received much attention is why a group of African
leaders, who seem genuine in their concerns, take responsibility for such
policy framework. The paper argues that citing the coercive power of the
Bretton Woods institutions, the Paris Club, and transnational capital to
compel compliance will constitute a very inadequate explanation. The paper
seeks an explanation in the complex interaction between a set of
developments in the last twenty years: the hegemonic position of
neoliberalism at the level of State policymaking, internal policy atrophy,
coercive power of compliance, but equally the new constituencies (class
forces) that have been thrown up in the last twenty years-within the state,
economy, and importantly the civil society in sub-Saharan Africa. Much of
the latter is premised on the "death of the emancipatory project". It is in
understanding NEPAD as a class project that we can fully understand its
import. This understanding is important for rethinking Africa's development.


NEPAD and the challenge of Africa's Development: towards the political
economy of a discourse

-------------------

1. Introduction

The development challenges that face Africa, especially Sub-Saharan Africa,
are enormous and varied. The crisis of poverty, genocidal conflict and civil
wars, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and the crisis of economic and social policy
outcomes are often presented as emblematic of the region. Understanding the
nature of the crisis and dynamics that feed it has been the object of
considerable contention. The analyses are to a considerable extent driven by
ideological locations and paradigms. As I have argued elsewhere (Adesina
2002b), the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) is best
understood as having specific ideological location and driven by specific
development paradigm. This paper is a follow-up to this earlier one. While
the earlier paper was concerned with specifying the epistemic basis of NEPAD
as a policy framework, the present paper is concerned with the nature of the
social forces that undergird the document as a development paradigm.

Often, reactions to NEPAD and the mode of its deployment have been driven by
a sense of betrayal. Similar feeling of astonishment and betrayal is
documented in the reaction of community-based organisation (CBOs) activists
to the contents and policy thrusts of country Poverty Reduction Strategy
Papers (Nyamugasira and Rowden 2002:15). While we can argue about the
specific manner in which NEPAD involves the extension of the policy
orthodoxy that has governed South Africa's macroeconomic policy making and
economic relations, it does not explain why the African leaders at the 2001
Lusaka conference of the OAU Heads of State signed up to the document. The
explanation, I will argue, lies elsewhere. The organising framework for this
paper therefore is to understand NEPAD as a class project, and to tease out
the emergence of this class configuration, which while bourgeois is
distinctly different from its primogenitors of the pre-1980s. The defining
shift in the African terrain of class relations is around the dominant
project of the petty bourgeois class. While in the 1970s, the dominant
pattern was of the African petty-bourgeoisie taking up Amilcar Cabral's
injunction of the necessity to commit class suicide (in order to be one with
the people), the dominant shift in Africa's class topography since the late
1980s is that of a petty bourgeois class least intent on committing class
suicide. In other words, the shift is from the 1970s of a petty bourgeois
class with proletarian/peasant aspirations to one that since the 1980s is
set on realising its bourgeois aspirations. This is the importance of what I
call Africa's silent revolution of the late 20th century. The objective of
the neoliberal project since the 1980s, has not only been to restructure
Africa's economy (to meet the expansionary needs of global capitalism) but
create an enabling environment-the class basis of making such project
sustainable. In other words, create a class whose interest is inexorably
linked to preserving the neoliberal project. That, I argue in Section 4 of
this paper, is the full import of NEPAD as a project. It is within this
framework-rather than a sense of betrayal-that constructing an alternative
project and rethinking Africa's development must begin. It is within this
framework that I very briefly explore some antinomies and blind spots of
NEPAD. I conclude with a prolegomenon to what must be the focus of the
agenda for an alternative development framework.

To set the stage for the core discussions in this paper, I outline in
Section 2, the analytical framework that I employ. Much of the debate around
NEPAD-both from its sponsors and several of the opponents-has been driven by
a binary logic. I suggest a different logic. Much of the criticism and
defence of NEPAD has been driven by this posing of binary opposites: "if it
is neoliberal, it cannot be concerned with poverty". In a specifically South
African context: "if it is bourgeois/neoliberal, it cannot be concerned with
poor black issues." This posing of binary opposites, I argue, obscures the
fundamental nature of identity as it is played out in the content and
deployment of NEPAD. It is possible to be bourgeois and be concerned with
poverty; to genuinely raise the issue of the need to end global apartheid
but deploy policy frameworks that actually reinforce it; to deeply affirm
one's Africaness and yet have a prosaic understanding of its history; to be
black and bourgeois! That, obviously, is axiomatic, but it is often lost
when we get into the arena of political contestation. It is in understanding
the mutual self embeddeness of opposites, which we can fully come to grips
with the discourse of NEPAD. In essence, this is the key to a political
economy of the discourse. Crucial to this is re-visiting the essence of
neoliberalism. In the earlier paper, I have sought to demonstrate the extent
to which NEPAD is driven by the neoliberal logic of the post-Washington
consensus. Untangling the 'rational kernel' of neoliberalism is essential to
overcoming the binary logic of the political debate around the idea. In the
current atmosphere (especially in South Africa), there is a sense in which
most activists deploy the label and those implementing neoliberal project
vehemently reject the label. Again, we confront the crisis of binary
discourse. It is in understanding the policy terrain not as a pristine and
ideal-type proposition of Normative Economics, but as the contested terrain
of actors that are multi-layered and multi-dimensional, in the identities
they bear. It is in understanding how biographies (individual and
collective) impact on the policy arena that we can grapple with
multidimensional nature and outcomes of policymaking. It is in this context
that we understand the concrete forms that neoliberalism assumes in the
broad daylight of active human agencies' contestations.

A bridge between the analytical framework and the discussion of the
understanding of NEPAD as a class project is the understanding of the
development and evolution of NEPAD. This allows for a better understanding
of the technocratic mode of its formulation, and the distinctly South
African reading of Africa's development past and future at the heart of
NEPAD. This is outlined in Section 3.

2. Analytical Framework: beyond binary logic

The debate around policymaking and content, especially when interlaced with
social location (gender, class, religious, ethnic, and so on), is always
fraught with considerable danger. Much of this finds its expression in the
clashes between activists and those designing policies. Very often the
debate descends into ascribing immutable, essentialist, properties to human
agencies on both sides of the divide. On the other hand more subtle
analytical attempts to grapple with complex reality easily give way in the
heat of political conflict. As indicated in the introductory section, the
result is that the multiple interpolation of social positions and the ways
in which these shift and change in the light of contested terrains of social
existence, are lost. Often the retreat into Aristotelian binary logic (in
which something is either/or, but hardly ever both) hinders both political
practice and the understanding of social processes. As discussed in greater
detail elsewhere (Adesina 2001/2002d), I will suggest that "the displacement
of Aristotelian binary logic and the affirmation of contingent co-existence
of opposites. provides the basis for a distinctly sociological" insight.

This is one in which the coexistence of opposites and the open-ended outcome
of social interaction or contending social forces provide an analytical
framework devoid of teleological discourse. Outcome is not fixed before
hand. When we confront class, ethnic, religious, gender (etc.)
manifestations of mutually exclusive identities; it will not be that we take
them as alternative identities. Rather it is in their inter-penetration and
mutual embeddedness that we understand real, lived existence as
multilayered, contradictory and context-situated (rather than the postmodern
imagined identities). We are not 'either'/'or'; we are often many things
embedded in one. (Adesina 2002d:106)

The analysis of the NEPAD is within this analytical framework, especially
the core thesis that the policy framework is better understood as a class
project, within a particular interpellation of a network of identities: even
when they seem contradictory at the beginning. Identities here, to reiterate
the point, are not some disembodied or imagined social practice; they are
rooted in real material contexts, aspirations and interests. It is within
this context that we will examine what I refer to as the silent revolution
of the past two decades.

2.1. Neoliberalism: specification and analytical framework

Central to the project of this paper is the concept of neoliberalism.
Earlier I have argued that NEPAD is profound neoliberal in mindset,
especially its understanding of Africa and the prognosis on the way out of
Africa's development dilemma (Adesina 2002b). Within the wider policy debate
in South Africa for instance, and the global social justice movement,
neoliberalism has assumed the status of a catch all labelling of policy
opponents and a shorthand for privatisation. The most cited definition, as
Paul Treanor (n.d.) reminds us, involves 'usual definitions' that are so
vague as to be of no heuristic value. It points to the consequences of
neoliberalism as increased gap between the rich and the poor, and the fact
that it has been imposed by the IMF and the World Bank. Often, it is in the
dramatic analogy that its essence is conveyed: Bond (2001:4) used the
metaphor of "knots in the economic rope tied around the necks of ordinary
people getting ever tighter and digging ever deeper." On the other side of
the table are policymakers who increasingly resent the labelling of their
ideas as neoliberal. An interesting case was when President Thabo Mbeki, (in
response to a comment by a participant at the "Continental Experts' Meeting
on NEPAD" held in Pretoria in June 2002, about the neoliberal content of
NEPAD), said he would like to be further informed on what "this thing called
neoliberalism is", because he has heard it used frequently but could not
seem to understand what it means. The debate with the Congress Alliance in
South Africa, demonstrates the extent to which the word is considered a
byword for "right-wing" and wielded as a political weapon (cf. Endnote 2).

At the heart of the apparent confusion is a deficit of understanding
concerning the relationship between conceptual discussions about
neoliberalism and actual policy implementation. For the opponents,
'privatisation' has become mobilizational rather than analytical. For
proponents, the charge of neoliberalism, which would seem to group them with
proponents of traditional economic liberalism failed to recognise that
privatisation (i.e. divestment of State assets or equity holding) is quite
limited, and that social policy seems to be concerned with poverty
reduction, equity of access (opportunity) for historically disadvantaged
segments of the population. In a sense, both sides are correct, but only
because of a limited and circumscribed understanding of neoliberalism and
what it actually entails.

Neoliberalism, as Treanor (n.d.) notes is best understood by focusing on
"the historical development of [economic] liberalism". Central to this is
the "belief in the moral necessity of market forces in the economy" and
"entrepreneurs. as a good and necessary social group." Economic liberalism
revolves around these two fundamentals and the propagation of the culture,
norms and social framework of power and relations that sustain both ideas.
In this regard, market forces are not only morally necessary but inherently
good and are the most appropriate ways to allocate resources and create
incentives in society. The entrepreneurs are the primary social force for
deploying and implementing this virtuous mode of managing society. The
extent of penetration of society-what Marx would call the "commodification
of social life"-is itself a result of contestation of the social terrain.

What is significant about neoliberalism, deriving from this basis in
orthodox market liberalism is "the desire to intensify and expand the
market, by increasing the number, frequency, repeatability, and
formalisation of transactions" (Treanor nd:5). It is in this propagation of
the principle of market transaction to as much areas of social and economic
existence and interaction as possible that defines the core value and
principle of neoliberalism. This could be spatial or temporal, or terrains
of social relationship that would be considered unsuitable to the logic of
market transaction. Bond (2001:4-10) appropriately identifies the basis of
contemporary neoliberal globalisation as an attempt to address the crisis of
over-accumulation by displacing the crisis. It is in pushing the frontiers
of market, as a normative position, that we understand the attempt to
resolve that crisis. In its specific manifestation, however, neoliberalism
is under-girded by two other core ideas: Monetarism (as the normative
framework for regulating macroeconomic affairs), and Supply-side Economics
(as the framework for addressing firm level production activities).

The specific configuration of the expansion and intensification of market
logic and norms, monetarism and supply-side management, and manifestation in
actual policy practice and implementation, will, however, depend on the
configuration of social forces and agencies that contest the policy terrain.
Capacity to move from theory to policy practice is therefore a critical
function of balance of social forces contesting the policy terrain. The
outcome, to go back to the analytical framework, is not fixed before hand.
Furthermore, the nature of the policy contestation is itself not binary, as
in State versus Civil Society (even if one could assume that there is one
civil society). The State itself is a terrain of active human agencies
contesting the policymaking process and at various levels the human agencies
are subject to multi-dimensional constellation of interest and aspirations.
The same applies to the civil society, which one would see as even more
multi-dimensional in this constellation of interest and aspirations.

What is crucial for our understanding of neoliberalism, therefore, is not
privatisation, per se. That is only one of several options available in the
extension of the market logic and the deification of the entrepreneurial
spirit. In the specific case of "restructuring" of State assets, it is not
so much the privatisation that underlines the neoliberal project, but the
falling away of the welfare functions of public enterprises and utilities.
The aspiration to extend the market logic to every arena of social and
economic relations (realised or not) would manifest itself in attempts at
inserting 'commercial principle' into the heart of traditional terrains of
social policy: health, sanitation, education, social security, and so on.
Added to this is the increased definition of every terrain of service
delivery as a business concern, driven by business logic: from municipal
services to running of health and educational institutions. The entrepreneur
becomes the high-priest of this new brave-world of life driven by market
logic. I will argue that it is in this reading of NEPAD, as a development
framework, that we understand its true import.

To the extent that these are principles that have for the last twenty years
been associated with the Bretton Woods institution's (BWIs) social
vivisectomy (Adesina 1994) in Africa, NEPAD's significance is in accepting
the call by the BWIs and the 'donor community' for African countries to take
ownership of these policies. The intensification and expansion of the market
principle and practice and the deification of the entrepreneurial 'class'
are themselves not a disembodied social process. They represent a distinct
class project at the global level. The failure of the sponsors of NEPAD to
pay attention to the debilitating consequences of twenty years of carnage of
the neoliberal project is more than coincidental. I will argue that it is
illustrative of the fundamental shift in the nature of the class forces on
the continent itself.

It is in understanding the core values of neoliberalism that we appreciate
its enduring logic in the policy "weaving and diving" by the BWIs and the
handlers in Washington and Europe over the last two decades. While there has
been significant shift in the language of deploying the neoliberal policy
instruments, from the early days of orthodox stabilisation and
liberalisation agenda (or Washington Consensus) and the current so-called
post-Washington Consensus, the core values remain the same (cf. Adesina
1994:vi-viii). It is in following the distinction that Imre Lakatos made
between the core and the protective belt of a research programme or paradigm
that we understand the shift in the language of the neoliberal discourse. I
have argued (Adesina 2002b) that NEPAD is rooted in the post-Washington
Consensus of the Wolfensohn Comprehensive Development Framework type, not
Joseph Stiglitz's. The rediscovery of poverty, concession to basic
education, and "good governance", etc., are not simply driven by deception.
Protests from street-level activism, the global social justice movement,
multilateral organisations, and those having to assume responsibility of the
policy instruments in the recipient countries had their tolls on the
proponents of the Washington Consensus. Beyond the usual suspects one must
add protests against orthodox neoliberalism have come from countries like
Japan and conventional economists like Joseph Stiglitz (1998a, 1998b) and
Paul Krugman (1998) over the IMF's bungling of the Asian Crisis of the
mid-1990s. The limit of the concessions was, however, set by the core values
of neoliberalism. So while there has been a lot of an effort to massage the
protective belt of neoliberalism, the core values have remained largely the
same. While not everyone has remained as dogmatic as Deepak Lal (1994),
Bhagwati's (1988) excellent documentation of the basis of this
concession-something in which he is himself a high priest-shows the extent
to which the neo-Walrasian trade-off (between growth and equity) is rooted
in sustained adherence to the core values of market liberalism.

Many of us have been surprised, though pleasantly his time, by the
realization that we had exaggerated our early fears about the trade-off
between "consumption" expenditure (such as financing education and health)
and investment expenditures aimed at growth. More is known now, therefore,
to wean us away from the fear that such educational and health expenditure
are necessarily at the expense of growth. (Bhagwati 1988:549-550)

Mkandawire (2001a) provides an excellent overview of these issues.
Concession to social policy spending is, however, without prejudice to
sustained adherence to the core values of neoliberalism. Indeed, the core
proposition of neoliberalism is that addressing equity issues-to a lesser or
greater extent-follow fundamental transactional principles. Public Private
Partnership (PPP), often involves the application of market principles to
traditional areas of social policy. User-fees involve the application of
quasi-market logic to areas traditionally considered as requiring universal
entitlements. That this might be wholly inappropriate in most contexts, and
that the fundamental assumptions of neoclassical economics (and specifically
market liberalism) have little validity in broad-day light of social
existence, remain fundamental sources of the damage and instability that
neoliberalism continue to wreck, and its link with heightening inequality
and worsening poverty. The issue is not whether neoliberal adherents and
fellow-travellers cannot (or are incapable of) empathy with the poor: that
will be to essentialise the more vociferous expressions of market liberalism
and assume that all neoliberal think the same way. It is that sustaining the
core principles of neoliberalism sets the limit on empathy with the poor.
Particular manifestations of neoliberalism will reflect the highly
contextual nature and diversity of social experiences, biographies,
aspirations, and interests of particular adherents, as well as the capacity
of other social forces to contest the terrain of policymaking with the
neoliberal adherents.

It is in this highly contextual understanding of particular deployment and
engagement with the core values of neoliberalism that we can better
understand NEPAD as a policy document: in all its antinomies,
misconceptions, and high-minded aspirations. It is in this context that we
move from the anger and despair concerning NEPAD as a betrayal to a social
reading of the project. To facilitate this, I believe it is important to
understand the origin and evolution of the document itself.

3. NEPAD: origin and evolution

The emergence of NEPAD has become the subject of considerable "urban
legend". Much of this has been in the context of response to the blistering
attacks on it by civil society organisations (cf. Bond 2002 for a
compilation). At other times, it is driven by the considerable acrimony
going on within the African diplomatic circles itself that prompts its
sponsors to find legitimacy for it. For instance, the statement by Aziz
Pahad (2002), South Africa's Deputy Foreign Minister, that the troika, of
Presidents Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Thabo Mbeki, and Olusegun Obasanjo, was
authorized by the OAU Heads of State in 1999 to develop the plan is such an
urban legend. The outcome of the OAU Heads of State's 35th Ordinary Session
and 3rd Ordinary Session on the African Economic Community in Algiers made
no reference to such mandate. While President Thabo Mbeki, attending his
first OAU meeting as Head of State of South Africa, delivered a statement on
the challenge of globalisation, his concerns about the need to "put in place
the mechanisms and procedures which would enable us to determine whether
what we are doing at the national, bilateral and regional levels is
consistent with the objectives in the Abuja Treaty", did not translate into
the idea of such mechanism being taken up or outside normal OAU structures.
If anything, the speech which took a very magisterial tone, rubbed the other
Heads of State on the wrong side.

The outcome of the OAU session focused more on (a) commitment to exclude
those who come to power by coup d'etat from attending OAU sessions, (b)
adoption of a proposal submitted by President Olusegun Obasanjo on peace and
security issues. This led to the Conference on Security, Stability,
Development and Co-operation in Africa (CSSDCA) initiative, which was
formally adopted at the 37th Session in Lome. Indeed, President Mbeki
strongly objected to a proposal by the UN Economic Commission for Africa
(UNECA) to put in place a mechanism on the challenge of globalisation and
information age for Africa, because it was outside the framework of the OAU
Assembly of Heads of State and Government. Further, there was nothing in the
two major international speeches that President Mbeki gave three months
later to suggest such mandate or plan.

Finally, no such authorisation or even acknowledgment of such a mandate is
found in the Lome Declarations of the OAU 36th Ordinary Session/4th Ordinary
Session of the AEC, in July 2000 (OAU 2000) or that from the March 2001
Extra-ordinary session of OAU Heads of State at Sirte, Libya. Further, it is
curious that such major project as the Millennium Plan was never mentioned
in the Declaration and Programme of Action adopted at the April 2000 G-77
Summit in Havana, Cuba. President Obasanjo was chair of the G-77, while
President Mbeki was the chair of the NAM, and President Bouteflika was still
chair of the OAU. Both Presidents Obasanjo and Mbeki played pivotal roles at
the Havana Summit.

I have gone to this extent because understanding the origin of NEPAD lies
elsewhere-outside the OAU mechanism and involves the troika taking 'matters
into their own hands.' The need for a distinct document, outside existing
structures of the OAU or the AEC, followed the 2000 meeting of the G8 in
Okinawa, Japan in July 2000. Presidents Bouteflika, Obasanjo and Mbeki had
met with the G8 leaders on the issue of debt relief for developing
countries, generally, but African countries in particular. The continent had
in twenty years of structural adjustment faced the massive escalation in
external debt: from US$60.6 billion in 1980 to US$206.1 billion in 2000
(Adesina 2002b). The demand for debt cancellation or relief had featured in
the Algiers and Lome declaration of the OAU Assembly of Heads of State.

For a country like Nigeria, external debt obligation was undermining
capacity to invest in the economy and social policy. More importantly,
coming out of 15 years of military dictatorship, delivering "democracy
dividend" was crucial for sustaining its fragile return to democracy. The
outcome of the Okinawa meeting with the G8 was a demand a "workable plan as
the basis of the compact" that the troika was demanding. The G8 response is
emblematic of the increasing demand for 'reciprocity' by the European and
North American countries-either in the so-called Economic Partnership
Agreements, like AGOA, the Cotonou Agreement, or in multilateral contexts
like the World Trade Organisation. South Africa's Foreign Minister commented
at the end of the meetings that: "We were pleasantly surprised at the
convergence of views from both sides. There seems to be emerging a very
clear agenda and consensus around issues that we can build a strategic
partnership on."

Following the Okinawa meeting, President Mbeki was given the responsibility
by the "troika" to develop a working document. The task fell to a small team
working from within the Presidency in Pretoria. This, I will argue, is
important for understanding NEPAD as a document driven by a distinctly South
African reading of the development challenges facing Africa and the
prognosis for Africa "extricating itself" out of its development quagmire.
It is distinctly South African, not in the sense of being general or typical
but emblematic of a dominant reading. It also explains the
multi-dimensionality of the identity concerns and aspirations that
underscore the document, both as an Africanist agenda and as a distinctly
neoliberal Africanist project. It is neoliberalism of the structuralist
variant, a lá Wolfensohn's CDF. For the drafting team in South Africa, the
organising framework was defined by two separate but interlinked projects.

First is the African Renaissance project of President Mbeki, as an
intellectual and cultural project. While confusing for many people in the
rest of the continent, the project is best understood as effort in an
Africanist agenda of self-awareness within South Africa and 'defeating' the
negative psychological, moral, and intellectual impact of 200 years of
institutionalised racism of a settler colony and Apartheid. In Spring of
2000, Rev Frank Chikane, the Director General in the Presidency (Pretoria),
had been to the United Nations to promote the idea of African Renaissance.
On 21 November 2000, President Mbeki signed into law the African Renaissance
and International Co-operation Fund Act No.51 (Adesina 2002b).

The second is the economic worldview that defined the work of the drafting
team. For Pretoria, the Growth and Employment and Redistribution (GEAR)
macroeconomic framework, adopted in 1996, has remained the premise of any
discussion or operation. It is fundamental to the notion of redistribution
and how Pretoria engages with global capitalism and its governance
institutions, such as the WTO. In spite of protestations to the contrary,
GEAR is a profoundly neoliberal document-not in a pejorative sense, but in
the sense that I discussed earlier. It is this conception of contemporary
global economy and how to survive in it, that undergirds NEPAD. While there
were some contestations of the turf among the team members, it is the more
neoliberal group that won the day. Perhaps, the only major concession that
the team took on board was the CSSDA framework that was President Obasanjo's
pet project.

The first public mentioning of the "plan" was six months later, on 28
January 2001, at the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos. As Mbeki
(2001) noted:

It is significant that in a sense the first formal briefing on the progress
in developing this programme is taking place at the World Economic Forum
meeting. The success of its implementation would require the buy-in from
members of this exciting and vibrant forum. (p.1).

The programme was appropriately named the Millennium African Renaissance
Program. Mbeki's briefing clearly indicated that the programme was meant to
be a club of "participating African leaders [who] would form a compact
committing them to the programme and a Forum of Leaders who would make
decisions about sub-programmes and initiatives and review progress on its
implementation." While "participation [was] open to all African countries",
there was an opt-in clause: those intent on participating must be "prepared
and ready to commit to the underlying principles guiding the initiatives. We
intend to brief all African Heads of State over the next few months" (Mbeki
2001a:2). Those who are not "ready will be welcome to join later." Clearly,
this was not an initiative of the OAU or its Assembly of Heads of State and
Government. This is an idea completely alien to the way the OAU operated.
Earlier in 1999, at Algiers, President Mbeki had objected strongly to the
UNECA project, precisely because it arose outside of such institutional
framework. President Mbeki's own account of the project, two days after he
arrived in South Africa from Davos (Mbeki 2001b), suggests an active agenda
in 2000 during which he interacted widely with the "political leadership of
the developed world-the North" (Mbeki 2001b) discussing and seeking
commitments to "the idea of a new and concerted effort to address, among
others, the challenge of African poverty and underdevelopment" (Mbeki
2001b). But this was essentially a personal initiative, without and before
"coming to any agreement with other African leaders and African civil
society" (Nabudere 2002: 52).

However, in purporting to speak for African leaders, and that "the MAP
programme is a declaration of a firm commitment by African leaders" (Mbeki
2001:1), Mbeki caused quite some angst among other African leaders, like
Abdoulaye Wade, also present at the WEF gathering. Nothing in the comments
of President Wade indicated that he had or was developing an alternative
plan. The Omega Plan was developed afterwards as a counter-measure to MAP
(cf. Adesina 2002b). Like MAP, the Omega Plan bears extensive evidence of
the proponent President being a key author (cf. Wade 2001a, 2001b). The May
2001 version of Omega Plan envisaged its being presented to the OAU Summit
scheduled for Lusaka in July 2001. The international conference of experts
was convened in Dakar in June 2001. This might explain the fast tracking of
MAP document for the same OAU Summit.

The initial preference for MAP as a principle by 'club of participating
countries' approach may reflect the suspicion within the OAU Assembly of
Heads of State itself. Nigeria and South Africa virtually walked out of the
Lome Summit over complaints about Libya's domination of the issue of the
African Union, and fast-tracking its establishment. The African Union
project had been put on the front burner at the September 1999 extra
ordinary session in Sirte, Libya. Muammar Ghaddafi's capacity to rally the
smaller African countries ahead of the 2000 Lome Summit and in securing
sufficient signatories to the Constitutive Act to bring the Act into force,
created considerable angst in Pretoria and Abuja. The Omega Plan was going
to be the second time that the two major African countries (Nigeria and
South Africa), which see themselves as natural leaders of the continent and
its spokespersons, would find themselves to be generals without troops.

While different in origin, both MAP and Omega Plan share a common approach
to overcoming Africa's development challenge. As "Africa's strategy for
globalisation" (Wade 2001b:6), Omega Plan shares the same understanding of
sources for financing and a private-sector led approach. While the Plan is
considerably woollier than MAP in the coherence of its arguments, MAP and
subsequently NEPAD suffer from related problems.

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