Participants at NEPAD Congress and Colloquium urge African leaders to promote regional integration, investments and Good Governance.

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By Semiu Babalola*

Addis-Ababa, 28 March 2012 - Participants at the NEPAD congress here have called on  African countries to accelerate regional integration, technology, economic progress, peace  and mobilize  local funds to deepen  as well  as accelerate gains recorded in the past ten years.

“We need to adopt the most innovative mechanisms and methods to finance our major programmes. In this regard, I commend the joint work of the AU Commission, NEPAD Agency ,UNECA and other partners to undertake a study on domestic resource mobilization for Africa’s development”, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Meles Zenaw said at the occasion.

Participants at the NEPAD Colloquium and Congress included serving and past Heads of State, development partners,  civil society groups, the organised private sector and the media.

The Congress was organised to mark the tenth year anniversary of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), set up in 2001 as an African home-grown blueprint to fight poverty, hunger, accelerate economic development and reduce the marginalization of the continent in the globalised economy.

With the theme, “Africa’s Decade of Change: Accelerating NEPAD Implementation through Domestic Financing” , the participants were unanimous that the coming of NEPAD has brought about great opportunities for partnerships among Africans and the outside world in health, agriculture, science/technology, good governance and infrastructure development.

But some of the participants, including the Ethiopian leader, believed as a way of ending over dependence on outside Africa to fund NEPAD projects can be address by mobilizing the huge domestic savings to finance infrastructure development.

He said there was the need to mobilise such funds locally, stressing that past method of funding of developmental programmes have not been quite successful.

The NEPAD idea was a combination of the New Initiative for Africa (NIA) and the Omega Plan promoted by former President of Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade.

Former African Presidents, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Hosni Mubarak for Egypt and President of Algeria, Aziz Boutlefika were behind the Africa’s Initiative.

Chief Olusegun Obasanjo in his contributions said the continent is witnessing positive development. He cited the successful conduct of elections in Senegal and some other countries as a pointer. The former Nigerian leader stressed the need for more private sector participation in Africa’s development, adding that human rights, the adoption of good business conducts and regional integration need to be pursued vigorously.

“Two issues that must be addressed are investments and integration. Both must go together. The ten years of NEPAD has rekindled hope for Africa, it has provided great opportunities and facilitated great development. During the last ten years, the NEPAD Secretariat was transformed into NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency (NPCA). It currently relies on foreign funds, which are designed by the foreign partners. This is not good enough, for an agency expected to plan akin to the Marshall plan in Europe, NPCA needs the support of all Africans for it to grow,” chief Obasanjo added.

Former President of Ghana Jerry Rawlings noted that the quest for regional and continental integration should not be seen as a threat to each country’s sovereignty and development but as great opportunities for trade, investments, mobility of labour and expertise.

“We need to place more emphasis on transparency, deepen science/technology, human capacity, and invest more in health, women and youths. In my view there is room for innovation. Economic diversification has become necessary and regional economic blocs must be encouraged if we want to make more progress,” Rawlings added.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa’s (UNECA) Executive Secretary, Abdoulie Janneh, said the partnership with NEPAD has promoted peace and security, human rights, economic and social development in the continent in the past ten years.

“We also assisted in mobilizing support for various African common positions on HIV/AIDS, debt relief, social protection, climate change and economic development....Through the direct support of the UN system, a joint plan of action was developed for ECOWAS and SADC to operationalize the initiative against human trafficking,” Janneh said.

Chief Executive Officer of NEPAD, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, said despite challenges, NEPAD has promoted democracy and good governance across the continent through the instrumentality of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM).

He said out of the 54 African countries, 30 0f them have acceded to the APRM, while 14 countries already have their corporate governance in place. In his remarks the Deputy Chairperson of the AU commission, Erastus Mwencha, said since its design in 2001 and adoption in July 2001 by the 37th Summit of the then OAU, as a response to the problems of poverty, underdevelopment and marginalization of Africa, NEPAD has matured as an integral programme of AU.

The author, Semiu Babalola, is a Journalist at PANA Press, Nigeria