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The website of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) describes the programme as "a holistic, comprehensive integrated strategic framework for the socio-economic development of Africa". But the question I would like to address is, what exactly is 'new' in the new partnership?

The view of COSATU has been and continues to be: we welcome any strategy to unite Africa around developmental challenges. It does not serve Africa's interests to be dismissive of attempts at development while also not weighing in with alternatives.
Having said that, however, it is the view of COSATU that the Nepad document proposes number of strategies and a basic developmental that we consider inappropriate.

To begin with, for us in South Africa, Nepad should cause a sense of de ja vu. The policy direction echoes the political and philosophical outlook of our own Growth, Employment, and Redistribution (GEAR) framework. What is wrong with this?

Development

The Nepad document describes the programme as a long-term vision of an African-owned and African-led "development programme". The truth, however, is that neither Gear nor Nepad are development programmes. They are rather strategies for attracting foreign capital to our economies. Nepad, in particular, does this by promising open markets, good governance, unspecified poverty reduction initiatives, and infrastructural development. There is nothing wrong with good governance, poverty reduction, and the development of infrastructure per se. However, even if one had realistic plans for achieving all these things, they would not amount to a 'development programme'. And it is appropriately massive development programmes that are needed, both here and on the wider continent.

The Nepad analysis

It is our belief that much of what is wrong with Nepad stems from a faulty analysis of the African dilemma. According to the drafters of Nepad, Africa suffers from the evils of massive abject poverty, undemocratic and weak states, inadequate foreign investment, and weak capitalist classes. This within the context of Africa's historic role as supplier of raw material and cheap labour to the global economy.
It follows from this analysis that what the continent needs is:

a sustained growth rate of 7% a year
infrastructure and social services
an annual injection of US$ 64bn in foreign investments (both FDI and debt relief)

There is nothing wrong with sustained growth, infrastructure, and foreign capital injections. But strategies to get the continent out of its developmental rot are going to need much more than this. A strategy for long-term development must deal with the reality of deep poverty and gross inequality.
As it currently stands, what Nepad offers is the promise of growth sustained by foreign funds, in exchange for "good governance". Essentially what this means is that African leaders guarantee:

respect for the traditional bourgeois or 'first generation' rights (free speech, regular elections, independent judiciary, etc)
combating state corruption
protecting property rights

A number of obvious problems flow from this emphasis. To begin with, Nepad is notoriously silent on socio-economic rights and other pressures of development. So while promoting deeper rights regimes in Africa is important, it remains incomplete if it lacks a focus on progressive labour and socio-economic rights. Thus Nepad's democracy promises fall short and will not deliver true democracy for Africans.

Nepad also threatens to further weaken African states relative to global capital. States whose function is only to protect existing property rights and 'facilitate' investment are hardly the appropriate developmental vehicles needed in Africa. Moreover, such moves threaten to entrench and extend Africa's inequalities of property ownership.
There also remains some concern about the ability of the proposed Nepad peer review system to deliver on good governance promises. It is not unrelated that the African Union (AU) was recently launched in Durban with the full membership of Swaziland, Africa's last absolute monarchy with no respect for democratic or union rights whatsoever.

Economics

The Nepad document sums up the key economic challenges and commitments of the continent as:

maintaining macro-economic stability by developing appropriate standards and targets for fiscal and monetary policy
transparent and legal and regulatory frameworks for financial markets and auditing private and public sector companies
promoting the role of women in social and economic development by, inter alia, facilitating access to credit
building the capacity of the state to enforce the legal/regulatory framework and maintain law and order
developing infrastructure and agriculture to serve domestic and export markets

It need not be pointed out to anyone that this is a precise echo of the World Bank's prescriptions for Africa in terms of their 'revised' structural adjustment programmes, which call for governments to spend more on poverty while pursuing contractionary fiscal policies.

According to Nepad's analysis, Africa's underdevelopment reflects poor governance that has not been able to provide a positive engagement with globalisation. It follows, therefore, that there is nothing wrong with the nature of capital and Africa's role in the world economy. The old free-market strategies and conservative policies still apply, albeit with anti-poverty programmes and welfare nets.

Needless to say, COSATU is dead set against this monumental mistake. To begin with, what cause has anyone to hope that the required investment and relief from the West will be delivered. After all, the G8 has responded to Nepad by promising US$6bn by 2006, if their conditions are met.

Such a reaction should indicate that the truly brave African initiatives, and the only ones appropriate for Africa, will completely dispense with market-based approaches to development and rather encourage strong, interventionist developmental states that can preside over targeted investment and aggressive redistribution.

Vukani Mde