Washington, DC — The New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad), "offers something different," G-8 heads of state and government, and representatives of the European Union, have said in an "Action Plan" released after their meeting, Thursday, with African leaders at Kananaskis. "The case for action is compelling."
The 19-page document, written in the voice of the world's richest nations, offers thousands of words of support and encouragement for what it calls, "a historic opportunity to overcome obstacles to development in Africa." But it asks Africa to be patient and to understand that they must wait a while longer before G-8 nations can specify exactly what they will do to help facilitate Nepad.
So African leaders leave Kananaskis with a little something more, but nowhere close to what they wanted. They can say the G-8 listened to them a little more carefully, and with greater concern. Indeed, at times it felt as if there were significant changes in tone, and even attitude, about Africa and its needs being reflected at the Summit. For the first time, trumpeted the press, Africans were being permitted to enter this rich nations' club and participate, albeit in a limited way.
In a way the Kananaskis "Africa Day" was indeed unprecedented. The continent has become a lightening rod for global development issues. But African leaders have been coming to these summits for a few years now. At the G-8 summit in Genoa, Italy last year, South African President Thabo Mbeki, and other African leaders, introduced Nepad in the form of a 60-page document, called "A New Initiative for Africa," which was the result of a merger of two separate plans drawn up by Mbeki and Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade.
The response then by the G-8, though far less elaborate than Thursday's Kananaskis praise and promise, was much the same. "We have decided today to forge a new partnership to address issues crucial to African development," they said in Genoa then.
This has become "a ritual" complains Salih Booker, executive director of Africa Action. "Give Africa a prominent place on the agenda. Show some compassion. Pledge a commitment in the future, always to be met in the future."
Yet many observers and analysts think that despite the sparse specifics, they detect in this year's involvement by African leaders, at least a rough outline of the parameters of a new relationship, although that is not because of some sudden change in the G-8 heart. The G-8 action plan states the underlying reason for its embrace of Nepad almost in passing: "The African peer-review process is an innovative and potentially decisive element...."
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African leaders are saying or promising: "We've changed. We won't turn a blind eye to corruption or tyranny on the continent" with enough force to have impact on mindsets that have long doubted that Africa could ever satisfy their requirements for political behavior. And it has been officially, or perhaps more accurately, semi-officially, acknowledged by the G-8: "African leaders...have formally undertaken to hold each other accountable....They have emphasized good governance and human rights as necessary preconditions for Africa's recovery."
Of course promises and hints of good things to come have been made to Africa before and not been kept. However, said one U.S. government official speaking on condition of anonymity: "We're not going to be able to back completely away from some of these commitments,"
Part of the reason for that, is that Africa too may be approaching the G-8 with a new specificity. Nepad was a vague idea in 2001 and didn't exist five years ago when African leaders began becoming visible at what were then G-7 Summits, raising issues of structural adjustment, debt relief, trade, investment and assistance. Africa's argument with itself over Nepad isn't finished either. And that fact too reflects the changed tone of discussion.
Nepad, which one observer wryly called, "essentially a grant proposal," continues to sharpen these discussions on both sides of the North-South divide. And in a world in which stability and effective development assistance are more clearly seen as intertwined, just might give African concerns greater power.
