NEPAD CEO Dr Ibrahim Mayaki has told post graduate students of political affairs at Columbia University that that it is crucial that Africa’s priorities were well-accounted in the new sustainable development goals (SDGs) which are set to replace the Millennium Development Goals after the 2015 deadline.

The lecture was hosted by Columbia University, the Institute for African Studies, and the SIPA Pan-African Network. More than 50 students and representatives of civil society groups attended. The theme was “Can the Post-2015 Development Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals help spur Africa’s Transformation?”

NEPAD has been adding its voice to the debate on the redefinition of new development initiatives in charting the course for Africa, as the deadline for the attainment of the MDGs approaches.

Dr Mayaki with AUC Chairperson Chief of Staff Mr Jean-Baptiste Natama

The eight goals which range from halving extreme poverty rates to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015 – formed a development design agreed to by all the world’s countries and development institutions. Very few of these targets have been achieved and there is now a robust repositioning on a post 2015 Agenda. The international Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals articulated 17 goals known as SDG’s with 169 targets that are action oriented and global in nature. These goals will be further elaborated through indicators focusing on measurable outcomes.

Dr Mayaki said that a Common African Position on the Post 2015 Development Agenda officially launched in June 2014 in Addis Ababa reaffirms poverty eradication as an overarching goal, but also emphasises the need for a structural transformation of Africa. He spoke robustly on four key aspects that are vital to the current debate on the international development agenda: the legacy of the MDGs; the defence of African interests within multilateralism; Africa’s governance challenges and proposed leverage leads.

In November 2013, African Ministers in Addis Ababa agreed on an outcome document of twelve Sustainable Development Goals or “African SDGs”. The Goals are based on key continental priorities, among them - economic and social development; environment and natural resources; institutions and governance; means of implementation, and promoting an integrated approach to sustainable development.

(l-r) Ambassador Ashraf Rashed, Vice Chairperson of APRM, Panel of Eminent Persons, Sarah Lawan of the AU/NEPAD Liaison Office in New York, Eugenia McGill of Columbia University and Dr Mayaki

Dr Mayaki said:  “In the 1980’s and 90’s there were austere yet necessary economic structural adjustment processes which weakened African countries capacity to think strategically. The two main policy instruments that were offered to Africa were poverty reduction strategies of the World Bank and IMF and later in the new decade, the Millennium Development Goals whose focus was mainly on poverty management. Structural Adjustments policies had an impact on the natural destructuralisation of the African state.

He said that this led to the emergence NEPAD as an African development solution to Africa’s challenges.  He cautioned that although 6 African countries were among the world’s top 10 growing economies in the last decade, and capacities for domestic resources mobilisation had improved, thereby depending less on Official Development Assistance (ODA), Africa is still experiencing a jobless type of growth, with no structural transformation.

Inequalities and poverty are persistent, youth unemployment is a growing threat, and our traditional governance models of top-down public policy design are no longer sustainable. This has to change” said Dr Mayaki

The lecture was also attended by Mr Jean-Baptiste Natama Chief of Staff of the AUC Chairperson. He gave a forward looking outline of how the AU is positioning its role in growth and development in Africa.

“We need a mind-set shift which promotes ownership of development and positive thinking about ourselves; we need to redefine the way we engage Africans in our development process,” said Mr Natama, adding that in order to strengthen the transformation process, the continent through the AU has now forged a new long-term vision called Agenda 2063, a global strategy to optimise use of Africa’s resources for the benefit of the continent’s people.

Students were keen to know what the AU and NEPAD were doing to tap into and harness the intellectual and financial resource of Africans in the Diaspora. They wanted to know if benevolent dictatorship as seen in some Asian countries was a better solution to development outcomes in Africa. A benevolent dictatorship is a theoretical form of government in which an authoritarian leader exercises absolute political power over the state but is seen to do so for the social economic benefit of the population as a whole.

Professor Akbar Norman, (above) senior fellow at the initiative for Policy Dialogues at Columbia University said that African had to own their development plans and discourse on and if this was not clearly defined, then outsiders would determine thus for them.

Students at Lecture

On the Africa Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), which is under Dr Mayaki’s interim stewardship until January 2015, the NEPAD CEO spoke of the need to build on the existing, and benchmark African innovative realisations and good practices such as those of the APRM, which now counts 10 years of practice on the continent.