Social Science Research in Africa, Dakar and
Third World Network-Africa, Accra
Declaration on Africa's
Development Challenges and Reflections on the New Economic Partnership for
Africa’s Development (NEPAD)
Adopted at the "Joint
Conference on Africa's Development Challenges in the
Millennium," Accra,
23-26 April 2002
1. From the 23
to 26 April, 2002, we, African scholars and activist intellectuals working in
academic institutions, civil society organisations and policy institutions from
20 countries in Africa, as well as colleagues and friends from Asia, Europe,
North America and South America, met at a conference jointly organised by the
Council for Development and Social Science Research in Africa (Codesria) and
the Third World Network-Africa (TWN-Africa) to deliberate on Africa's
developmental challenges in the new millennium.
2. Our
deliberations covered such issues as Africa's initiatives for addressing
development; Africa and the world trading system; mobilising financing for
development in Africa; citizenship, democracy and development; education,
health social services and development, and gender equity and equality in
development.
3. In our
deliberations, we recalled the series of initiatives by Africans themselves
aimed at addressing the developmental challenges of Africa, in particular the
Lagos Plan of Action and the companion African Alternative Framework for
Structural Adjustment. Each time, these initiatives were counteracted and
ultimately undermined by policy frameworks developed from outside the continent
and imposed on African countries. Over the past decades, a false consensus has
been generated around the neoliberal paradigm promoted through the Bretton
Woods Institutions and the World Trade Organisation. This stands to crowd out
the rich tradition of Africa's own alternative thinking on development. It is
in this context that the proclaimed African initiative, the New Partnership for
Africa's Development (NEPAD), which was developed in the same period as the
United Nations Economic Commission for Africa's Compact for African Recovery,
as well as the World Bank's Can Africa Claim the 21st Century?, were discussed.
4. The meeting
noted the uneven progress of democratisation and in particular of the expansion
of space for citizen expression and participation. It also acknowledged the
contribution of citizen's struggles and activism to this expansion of the
political space, and for putting critical issues of development on the public
agenda.
External and internal obstacles to
Africa's economic development.
5. The meeting
noted that the challenges confronting Africa's development come from two
inter-related sources: (a) constraints imposed by the hostile international
economic and political order within which our economies operate; and (b)
domestic weaknesses deriving from socioeconomic and political structures and
neoliberal structural adjustment policies.
6. The main
elements of the hostile global order include, first, the fact that African
economies are integrated into the global economy as exporters of primary
commodities and importers of manufactured products, leading to terms of trade
losses. Reinforcing this, secondly, have been the policies of liberalisation,
privatisation and deregulation as well as an unsound package of macro-economic
policies imposed through structural adjustment conditionality by the World Bank
and the IMF. These have now been institutionalised within the WTO through rules,
agreements and procedures, which are biased against our countries. Finally, the
just-mentioned external and internal policies and structures have combined to
generate unsustainable and unjustifiable debt burden which has crippled
Africa's economies and undermined the capacity of Africa's ownership of
strategies for development.
7. The external
difficulties have exacerbated the internal structural imbalances of our
economies, and, together with neoliberal structural adjustment policies,
inequitable socio-economic and political structures, have led to the disintegration of our economies and
increased social and
gender inequity.
In particular, our manufacturing industries have been destroyed; agricultural
production (for food and other domestic needs) is in crisis; public services
have been severely weakened; and the capacity of states and governments in
Africa to make and implement policies in support of balanced and equitable
national development emasculated. The costs associated with these have fallen disproportionately
on marginalised and subordinated groups of our societies, including workers,
peasants, small producers. The impact has been excessively severe on women and
children.
8. Indeed, the
developments noted above have reversed policies and programmes and have
dismantled institutions in place since independence to create and expand
integrated production across and between our economies in agriculture,
industry, commerce, finance, and social services. These were programmes and
institutions which have, in spite of their limitations, sought to address the
problems of weak internal markets and fragmented production structures as well
as economic imbalances and social inequities within and between nations
inherited from colonialism, and to redress the inappropriate integration of our
economies in the global order. The associated social and economic gains,
generated over this period have been destroyed.
Reflections on NEPAD.
9. The above
informed our reflections on the NEPAD. We concluded that, while many of its
stated goals may be well-intentioned, the development vision and economic
measures that it canvases for the realisation of these goals are flawed. As a
result, NEPAD will not contribute to addressing the developmental problems
mentioned above. On the contrary, it will reinforce the hostile external
environment and the internal weaknesses that constitute the major obstacles to
Africa's development. Indeed, in certain areas like debt, NEPAD steps back from
international goals that have been won through global mobilisation and
struggle.
10. The most
fundamental flaws of NEPAD, which reproduce the central elements of the World
Bank's Can Africa Claim the 21st Century? and the ECA's Compact for African
Recovery, include:
(a) the
neoliberal economic policy framework at the heart of the plan, which repeats
the structural adjustment policy packages of the preceding two decades and
overlooks the disastrous effects of those policies;
(b) the fact
that in spite of its proclaimed recognition of the central role of the African
people to the plan, the African people have not played any part in the
conception, design and formulation of the NEPAD;
(c)
notwithstanding its stated concerns for social and gender equity, it adopts the
social and economic measures that have contributed to the marginalisation of
women;
(d) that in
spite of claims of African origins, its main targets are foreign donors,
particularly in the G8;
(e) its vision
of democracy is defined by the needs of creating a functional market;
(f) it
under-emphasises the external conditions fundamental to Africa's developmental
crisis, and thereby does not promote any meaningful measure to manage and
restrict the effects of this environment on Africa development efforts. On the
contrary, the engagement that it seeks with institutions and processes like the
World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, the United States Africa Growth and Opportunity
Act, the Cotonou Agreement, will further lock Africa's economies
disadvantageously into this environment;
(g) the means
for mobilisation of resources will further the disintegration of African
economies that we have witnessed at the hands of structural adjustment and WTO
rules.
Call for action.
11. To address
the developmental problems and challenges identified above, we call for action
at the national, continental and international levels to implement the measures
described below.
12. In relation
to the external environment, action must be taken towards stabilisation of
commodity prices; reform of the international financial system (to prevent
debt, exchange rate instability and capital flow volatility) as well as of the
World Bank and the IMF; an end to IMF/World Bank structural adjustment
programmes; fundamental changes to the
existing agreements of the WTO regime, as well as stop the attempts to expand
the scope to this regime to new areas including investment, competition and
government procurement. Most pressing of all, Africa's debt must be cancelled.
13. At the
local, national and regional levels, development policy must promote
agriculture, industry, services including health and public education, and must
be protected and supported through appropriate trade, investment and
macro-economic policy measures. A strategy for financing must seek to mobilise
and build on internal and intra-African resources through imaginative savings
measures; reallocation of expenditure away from wasteful items including
excessive military expenditure, corruption and mismanagement; creative use of
remittances of Africans living abroad; corporate taxation; retention and
re-investment of foreign profits; and the prevention of capital flight, and the
leakage of resources through practices of tax evasion practised by foreign
investors and local elites. Foreign investment while necessary, must be
carefully balanced and selected to suit national objectives.
14. Above all,
these measures require the reconstitution of the developmental state: a state
for which social equity, social inclusion, national unity and respect for human
rights form the basis of economic policy; a state which actively promotes, and
nurtures the productive sectors of the economy; actively engages appropriately
in the equitable and balanced allocation and distribution of resources among
sectors and people; and most importantly a state that is democratic and which
integrates people's control over decision making at all levels in the
management, equitable use and distribution of social resources.
15. Recognising
that, by raising anew the question of Africa's development as an Africa-wide
concern, NEPAD has brought to the fore the question of Africa's autonomous
initiatives for development, we will engage with the issues raised in NEPAD as
part of our efforts to contribute to the debate and discussions on African
development.
16. In support
of our broader commitment to contribute to addressing Africa's development
challenges, we undertake to work both collectively and individually, in line
with our capacities, skills and institutional location, to promote a renewed
continent-wide engagement on Africa's own development initiatives. To this end,
we shall deploy our research, training and advocacy skills and capacities to
contribute to the generation and dissemination of knowledge of the issues at
stake; engage with and participate in the mobilisation of social groups around
their interests and appropriate strategies of development; and engage with
governments and policy institutions at local, national, regional and
continental levels. We shall continue our collaboration with our colleagues in
the global movement.
17. Furthermore,
we call,
(a) for the
reassertion of the primacy of the question and paradigm of national and
regional development on the agenda of social discourse andintellectual
engagement and advocacy;
(b) on Africa's
scholars and activist intellectuals within Africa and in the Diaspora, to join
forces with social groups whose interests and needs are central to the
development of Africa;
(c) African scholars
and activist intellectuals and organisations to direct their research and
advocacy to some of the pressing questions that confront African policy and
decision making at international levels (in particular negotiations in the WTO
and under the Cotonou agreement), and domestically and regionally;
(d) upon our
colleagues in the global movement, to strengthen our common struggles, in
solidarity. We ask our colleagues in the North to intervene with their
governments on behalf of our struggles, and our colleagues in the South to
strengthen South-South co-operation.
18. We pledge
ourselves to carry forward the positions and conclusions of this conference.
And we encourage Codesria and TWN-Africa to explore, together with other
interested parties, mechanisms and processes for follow-up to the deliberations
and conclusions of this conference.