Nepad's UN legitimation

Nepad's UN legitimation 
 
(This roadmap to growing subimperial connections within the UN bureaucracy
comes from the HSRC's SARPN: www.sarpn.org.za... a shame that the write-up
on Neville Gabriel's input shows a politeness uncharacteristic of most major
civ.soc. statements against Nepad... and how's this for a banal "main point"
non sequitor: "Part of the reason for South Africa's approach to Zimbabwe is
a concern to keep it in the Nepad camp." Try running that one by Jono Moyo.)

Nepad Becomes the Framework for UN Relations with Africa

SARPN recently hosted a panel discussion on the decision by the UN General
Assembly to make Nepad the framework for its relations with Africa. Dr John
Ohiohenuan, UNDP Resident Representative in South Africa, spoke on the
reasons behind the decision and the modalities for providing support to the
Nepad programme. Neville Gabriel, a senior official within the Justice and
Peace department of the Southern African Catholic Bishop's Conference, spoke
on civil society perspectives towards Nepad, after which the discussion was
opened to the floor. The discussion, held on 29 November 2002, was attended
by 50 persons, representing civil society, donors, diplomatic and government
sectors.

The UN View
John Ohiorhenuan began by noting that Nepad, which was adopted by the OAU
Heads of State at a summit held in Lusaka in July 2001, was essentially a
strategic framework consisting of five main elements:
? an insistence on African ownership, responsibility and leadership and
building capacity for this role;
? a focus on developing a new partnership with the industrialised countries
and multilateral organisations on the basis of mutual commitments and
obligations;
? a commitment to nurturing an enabling socio-political environment by
minimising conflict and promoting democracy and human rights;
? a commitment to an enabling economic environment by ensuring macroeconomic
stability and maintaining transparency and accountability in institutional
support mechanisms for the market; and
? promoting sub regional and continental economic integration.

In adopting Nepad, African leaders pledged themselves to place the continent
on a path of sustainable development, anchored in the determination of
Africans to extricate themselves from under-development and global
marginalisation. None of these elements are particularly controversial:
"they build on the lessons of several decades of experience with development
programmes in Africa". While it was easy to criticise Nepad, a common
criticism being that it is too oriented towards the concerns of the
developed countries, it was important to see it as an unfolding agenda, not
a final product, and to direct criticism towards shaping its evolution.

The UN Decision
The decision in June 2002 by the UN General Assembly to adopt Nepad as the
framework for supporting development in Africa came in the context of an
evaluation of the United Nations New Agenda for Development in Africa
(UN-NADAF), which guided the UN's programme for Africa through the 1990s.
The evaluation identified five main lessons from its implementation.
? Peace and security are vital to development. Although the New Agenda, from
the outset, recognised the vital link between peace and development,
conflict continued to threaten progress in many parts of the continent
throughout the 1990s.
? Development cooperation with Africa required a new orientation to overcome
the limitations of the overriding reliance on liberalisation, privatisation
and market reforms.
? Commitments need to be honoured. The lack of success in implementing the
New Agenda was to an extent due to the fact that it was only partly
implemented by African Governments and hardly at all by the donor community.
? Strengthened advocacy for Africa's development remained essential. An
acknowledged contribution of the United Nations in the last decade has been
in heightening awareness of Africa's needs, and creating greater
appreciation of its achievements and the difficulties it faces.
? Improved coordination and collaboration among United Nations agencies in
Africa could help in achieving results that exceeded the sum total of
individual contributions.

The overlap between these lessons and the commitments expressed in Nepad, as
well as Nepad's commitment to several of the Millennium Development Goals,
were taken into account in the General Assembly's decision to adopt Nepad as
the successor to NADAF.

Future UN support
The evaluation proposed that the UN's future role in supporting Nepad should
take the form of 'enhanced advocacy, undertaking technical cooperation for
capacity building, mobilising resources, monitoring and reporting on
activities in support of Nepad, and strengthened coordination in the
delivery of programmes.' In line with Nepad's emphasis on using existing
structures, the UN support programme will work through mechanisms and
frameworks that are already in place. At country level it would use existing
programming tools, such as the PRSPs, as the main mechanisms for engagement,
but with special attention to reducing the burden of coordination on
governments and agencies. Where national priorities were not aligned with
Nepad priorities this would lead to tensions and would limit the
effectiveness of UN support.  At the regional level, UN agencies would form
five clusters which would allow the UN system to respond better to the Nepad
Initial Action Plan. The clusters and their focus areas are:

Infrastructure development, water and sanitation, energy, transport and ICTs
would be led by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). The focus will be
on:
? operationalising the African Energy Commission (AFREC) and attracting
investment;
? operationalising the integrated water resource management principle from
the Africa Water Vision 2025;
? assisting with implementing the Sub-Saharan Africa Transport Policy
Programme and the liberalisation of air transport markets in Africa, and
? working with existing frameworks on ICTs such as the African Information
Society Initiative (AISI).

Governance, peace and security would be led by the UNDP. The focus will be
on:
? developing a framework to promote and implement a rights based approach
giving attention to best practice, strengthening oversight and capacity for
advocacy, implementation and monitoring, and reviewing legislation and
capacity;
? develop integrated programmes for conflict prevention, management and post
conflict recovery and reconstruction with particular focus on refugees and
internally displaced persons, and
? promoting good governance including supporting the development of
indicators for the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) and developing
capacity for peer review and self assessment;

The UNDP's Nepad Programme Preparatory Assistance Project is an example of
the kind of programme envisaged. It provides for a technical support
facility for the Nepad secretariat, a Nepad Advisory Panel, a joint AU/Nepad
Communication and Popularisation Strategy, a Strengthening Democracy and
Good Political Governance component to support the APRM, a component to
support and evaluate external partnerships and one for country level
promotion of Nepad-MDG goals.

Agriculture, trade and market access would be led by the FAO. The focus will
be on:
? helping to implement the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development
Programme (CAADP), a major component of the Nepad framework, to ensure
agricultural stability and economic development. The CAADP calls for an
investment of US$240 billion in African agriculture by 2015 (less than the
current annual cost of food imports), focusing on three pillars:
o Extending the area under sustainable land management and reliable water
control systems;
o Improving rural infrastructure and trade related capacities for market
access;
o Increasing food supply and reducing hunger;
? ensuring better market access for African exports; and
? diversifying commodity dependent economies.

Ohiorhenuan noted that the FAO's assistance to Nepad in the CAADP's
formulation was an example of the kind of support that the UN system could
offer to Nepad in various other areas.

Environment, population and urbanisation would by led by Habitat. The focus
will be on the challenges posed by population growth and movement, rapid and
uncontrolled growth of human settlements, environmental depletion,
degradation and pollution and the lack of demographic statistics. The group
had identified the following joint programmes and activities for 2003-2004:
? natural disaster and risk management including mapping sensitivity and
risk, integrated planning, and establishing early warning mechanisms;
? sustainable Nepad cities, including mapping poverty and empowering
communities and local government;
? safer cities including victimisation surveys and offender profiling;
? waste Management including the impact of waste on environments and human
settlements;
? rural-urban linkages and managing peri-urban growth including assessing
pressure on peri-urban lands and the environment;
? global warming and the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol on climate
change including the development and implementation of clean development
mechanisms;
? marine environment protection, monitoring, control and mitigation of
marine pollution;
? data for monitoring and evaluation progress towards achieving Nepad goals;
? policy dialogue, advocacy and awareness; and
? capacity building at regional and sub regional levels for joint
implementation of programmes to address environmental pollution and
urbanisation issues, and response to emergencies.

Human resource development, employment and HIV/AIDs  would be led by UNICEF.
The focus will be a 'fast track' approach to produce measurable results in a
small number of priority areas in the short to medium term to demonstrate
and accelerate commitments. These areas are:
? Education: free compulsory primary education for all; accelerate girls'
education; ensure special risks children's attendance; expand teacher
training; technical education for employment; improving the quality of
higher education.
? Employment: mainstreaming employment and labour issues into Nepad and
national PRSPs through an inventory of best practices. This includes
translating the MDGs into specific employment related targets, the
formulation of a social policy framework and focusing on child labour issues
and their implications for education.
? HIV/AIDS: promote national dialogue; information sharing and consultation
on the HIV/AIDS campaign; support the mainstreaming of HIV/AIDS into Nepad
sectoral programmes; support the establishment of a regional observatory for
monitoring, for example, drug pricing; advocacy for generic drug production
and disease tracking; supporting countries in meeting commitments made at
Abuja and UNGASS.

To encourage cooperation between the above-mentioned five clusters, the
Executive Secretary of the ECA would periodically call joint meetings of the
cluster convenors with the Nepad secretariat (see also Figure 1 on page
six).  In addition, a consolidated report, based on the work of the
clusters, would be included in the UN Secretary General's annual report on
Africa. This reporting process, led by the Secretary General on Nepad, was
seen as a way to spur countries towards action that would produce tangible
developmental results. The Nepad secretariat had also indicated that it
would use the consolidated report in its own policy, programme formulation
and advocacy work.

At the global level, the UN would also foster a coordinated and coherent
response at an intergovernmental level to the interrelated issues of peace,
security and development in Africa; it would put the implementation of Nepad
on the agenda of every General Assembly session and would also pursue global
advocacy for Nepad through the office of the Special Coordinator for Africa
and the Least Developed Countries (OSCAL).

Dr Ohiorhenuan concluded by noting that underlying the UN's commitment was a
belief that Nepad was a programme by Africans, for Africa and that Nepad
would evolve over the next few years as "we learn by doing".

***

A Civil Society View

Neville Gabriel began by noting that Nepad could only be seen to achieve its
goals if African communities believed that it was delivering effectively at
the community level. From this perspective the major concern has been the
lack of opportunity for the participation of African communities and civil
society in the rapidly developing debate around Nepad's developmental
framework.

Achievements
Nepad had initiated positive developments in three important areas:
? the countries driving Nepad have been centrally involved in peace
processes in Africa, even if they have not formally represented Nepad;
? Nepad has played a major role in putting Africa back on the global
development agenda, securing a place for it on the G8 agenda for the first
time, and ensuring that it will remain on the agenda next year;
? there are indications of movement towards stronger government
accountability, at least in the Nepad core group.

However, there has been a tendency amongst civil society organisations to
focus on NEPAD documents without looking at the political processes that
happen around them. For example in the debate on peer review there is no
clarity on which institutions will be responsible for drafting the initial
political peer review of 13 countries or on the composition of the eminent
persons panel which will review the findings. This underlines the fact that
political processes around Nepad remain strongly contested.

Concerns
Civil society organisations are also concerned about gaps in the Nepad
documents and about towards some of the policy approaches adopted. On the
subject of capital flows the Millennium Africa Plan (MAP), one of Nepad's
precursors, had a strong proposal on debt cancellation, a subject on which
Nepad itself has said little concrete yet. MAP argued that debt
sustainability could not be based on foreign trade earnings given the
decline in commodity prices. It should rather be capped as a percentage of
government revenues (5-10 percent) after calculating the cost of poverty
reduction programmes. On this basis most African countries would qualify for
total debt cancellation.

Nepad argues for greater integration into the global economic order as part
of the solution to Africa's development problems. However, foreign trade
already accounts for more than 40 percent of total economic activity on the
continent and on this basis it is already over-exposed to global economic
forces. Rather than proposing greater integration, Nepad should be looking
at ways to stop or limit the outflows of capital from Africa, which are the
worst in the world.  The experience in Africa with long term, indirect
strategies for poverty reduction such as Nepad is that they have led to
increased joblessness and poverty. To counter this Nepad needs, at least in
part, to look at ways of addressing poverty directly.

There are also concerns about geopolitical realignments in Africa related to
Nepad. While Nepad has been adopted as a continent wide strategy by the AU,
in its relations with donors Nepad will create "winners and losers", with
the main benefits likely to go to the economically stronger countries. This
is likely to increase polarisation on the continent around support for Nepad
which is already feeding divisions in the SADC region between Zimbabwe,
Angola and Namibia (which share a military pact) and South Africa, Botswana
and Mozambique, which have growing trade links. These shifting geopolitical
alignments on the continent provide a new African geopolitical context for
assessing Nepad.

Nepad has no process for direct engagement with civil society. While there
is a general recognition of the impossibility of engaging with all civil
society organisations, the design of the programme does not include
processes or mechanisms for consultation. If one views Nepad as a poverty
reduction strategy programme on a continental scale it lacks the
participatory element that is regarded as essential to the success of these
programmes and an important reason for the failure of earlier poverty
reduction initiatives.

On the issue of development aid there are concerns that the meeting with the
G8 at Kananaskis skirted the issue of time frames and firm commitments by
donor countries. In addition, a predictable shift in official development
assistance (ODA) from development support directly targeting communities, to
a focus on support for private sector investment, notably through export
credit guarantees, could impact negatively on debt.

The debate on market access within Nepad focuses on tariffs and quotas.
While this is important for established exporters and foreign investors, the
issue of subsidies is more important from a trade justice perspective. For
example every European cow gets around US$2.3 a day in subsidies while half
of Africa's people live on less. Support for small-scale farmers in Africa
means reducing or eliminating the subsidies in developed countries that
impact on the price of commodities. This would prevent a situation where,
for example, sugar produced in the EU sells at less than its production
price, making it uneconomic for small-scale farmers in Africa to harvest
their sugar crops for market.

Neville Gabriel noted in his concluding comments that there was an "overall
sense" that Nepad had gone for what was politically winnable in current
terms. While civil society supports the advocacy role that Nepad has played
in putting Africa back on the global development agenda, it would like to
see a far more direct approach by Nepad to poverty reduction in Africa.  If
Nepad, in its current form, articulated only what it felt was politically
practical in the current context, then civil society organisations would
continue to work to broaden the public space for debates around Nepad and
Africa's development.

***

Discussion

In general the discussion ranged between those who felt that Nepad was not
making enough of the opportunities that it represented and those who felt
that it represented a positive start that provided a foundation on which to
build.  Other issues included how civil society could be more effective and
questions around how the UN would play a role in supporting Nepad, as a
programme driven and based outside the UN system.

Discussion also noted that getting the Nepad document accepted by the OAU
was an achievement in itself. Overcoming barriers between African countries
was, in itself, a daunting agenda on a continent where many nations still
guarded their borders jealously. Relations between African countries are
probably more complex that relations with the developed world.

Here are the main points from the discussion:

? The focus on infrastructure is important as without roads, communications
and things like phytosanitary standards, African countries will not be able
to benefit from trade opportunities.
? On the issues of trade and subsidies Africa cannot dictate what other
countries and blocs should do. It should look at trade between African
countries and not only at trade with developed countries.
? Nepad is conservative on the debt issue but it has put it on the agenda.
This makes it possible for other groups to push the issue further. It has
helped to open the space for what is politically possible.
? Much of the evolution of globalisation is taking place around the WTO.
Africa is at a disadvantage because it lacks capacity to engage on this key
issue. Nepad provided the opportunity for African countries to pool
resources to get the necessary technical capacity.
? Nepad provides the opportunity to maximise the presence of African needs
on the world stage. In the longer term this may be the role of the AU, but
at present it is not in a position to take this up.
? It creates a vehicle for communication with other countries in the world
and between countries in Africa.
? Regional integration is important - it is seen in Nepad as one of the
three essentials for development on the ground.
? Good governance is emphasised to enable African countries to access the
finance to undertake development projects.
? The one step, two step approach of getting good governance in place and
then getting development going is not likely to work.
? Nepad risks creating winners and losers amongst African countries in the
development stakes through processes like peer review. This will increase
divisions on the continent. Part of the reason for South Africa's approach
to Zimbabwe is a concern to keep it in the Nepad camp.
? Bringing the private sector on board Nepad was "essential for success"
while a similar process to engage with communities and local people was also
needed.
? The research community needed to make a greater contribution to Nepad.
? The lack of consultation with civil society raised questions about the
lack of effectiveness of civil society in South African specifically but
also elsewhere in Africa. What does civil society need to do to increase its
influence and engage more effectively at national level on issues like
health and education?