IMPLEMENTING THE NEW PARTNERSHIP FOR AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT (NEPAD) BY PROMOTING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SME SECTOR IN THE CONTEXT OF CAPITAL MARKETS IN AFRICA

by Chief Dennis O. ODIFE
(Article Reference: Document No.18, November 2002)

Implementing the NEPAD
The NEPAD is not an institution but a programme of action. Its implementing authority is the AU with its individual membership together with permanent as well as ad hoc bodies that may be established for specific purposes. The identified annual funding gap of US$ 64 billion is a major obstacle to implementation. It is in questionable taste for NEPAD to request the development partners to pledge their treasury bills for African development. Most significantly, it reduces the entire arrangement to a master-servant affair rather than a true partnership. The situation is made worse by the fact that the so-called development partners are unlikely to oblige. The failures to obtain massive debt relief and substantial overseas development assistance make the programme a lame duck from the start. To worsen matters, the results of the Corporate Governance Initiatives are to be felt in the medium term, while as John Maynard Keynes said, "…in the long run we are all dead…" There is therefore the need for more immediate action if the programme is not to fail from the start.

As correctly identified by the NEPAD, the key to its success is ownership and leadership by the ordinary African. This, in my view, can only now, in the absence of a bottom-up Africa-wide visioning and sensitisation process, be achieved by immediate mass mobilization of Africans using internally generated revenues, no matter how limited. This would demonstrate self-reliance so critical to the African spirit, while encouraging Africans in Diaspora and foreign investors, in that order, to invest in the new African initiative to help itself. The NEPAD is a product of the government sector. African ownership of it must emphasize ownership by the ordinary African, especially those in the informal sector and the SME and SSI sectors of the African economy. One good way to get Africans to own the NEPAD and to lead its implementation would be to persuade them to buy into the NEPAD through programmes that are relevant to them and which they can proudly identify with.

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