Discussion
Write about the goals of the African Union and its programme NEPAD.
It has been seen that African Action Plan can be referred to as the defining statement of the country’s current priority programs and the projects which are associated with the promotion of Continental and regional integration and curd in the guiding principles of the new partnership for Africa’s development (NEPAD). In this regard African Development Bank was asked to carry out a review and revision of the African Action Plan (AAP). It has been seen that after revising African Action Plan that was made between the years of 2010 to 2015, advancing regional and Continental integration was celebrated in the year of 2009 in Tunis and then it was endorsed by the heads of state and government at AU Summit (Wolinsky et al. 2017). It has been seen that the mandate to pursue Continental and religion integration by African Union can be derived from Lagos plan of action 1980 and the Abuja Treaty which was signed on and African economic committee in the year of 1991. It has been seen that the African Union Commission which is the administrative body and secretariat to African Union has provided the mandate to advance the case of integration and development in the entire socio-economic layer of the continent (Hamad and Kitigwa 2016). Its purpose in this respect will reflect in the vision statement made in the AUC’s strategic plan which was made in the year of 2004. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the targets of African Union and its program NEPAD.
In the year of 2001 NEPAD has taken major programme of action or strategy in order to achieve sustainable development in the 21st century. This is mostly emphasized on the continental and regional scale programs and projects. The five countries that initiated this programme of action tasked by African leaders understood the importance of economic independence and the social issues which are common can be experienced by individuals across the African continent as they strive to gain economic prosperity along with social well being. Therefore it has been observed that they need to create linkages adopt the best practices and also organised the policies set for the betterment of the situation and this should be done on a regional or in a continental basis (Hamad and Kitigwa 2016). While analysing in a comprehensive manner it can be said that the goal of NEPAD programme includes numerous initiatives in order to strengthen the pre-conditions that are required for sustainable development an includes security, peace, democracy and economic, political and corporate governance (Wolinsky et al. 2017). It was also identified that the sectoral policies including human resource development infrastructure environment science and technology along with culture where incorporated are involved in the plan of actions. These programs addressed the issues of mobilizing resources and the issues to improve the market access and therefore the governments of those five countries called for a new partnership with the industrialized countries and multilateral business organisations
NEPAD’s Guiding Principles
In this regard the guiding principles of NEPAD that shapes their primary objectives are:
- Promotion and protection of good governance democracy and the human rights
- African leadership and ownership
- Anchoring the continent of Africa as development regarding the resourcefulness of the Africans and on the resources and in short people centred development
- Promoting gender equality
- Deepening and accelerating the continental and regional economic integration
- Holistic comprehensive and integrated development program for the continent of Africa
- Creating new relationship of partnership among the Africans and the international community and specially with the industrialized Nations across the world
Since the year of 2001 NEPAD’s call to action has been responded in different ways. It can be said that the programme of action has been promoted or endorsed by all the bilateral and international agencies that includes UN General Assembly to the members of European Union and the group of eight also by the organisation for economic cooperation and development which is also known as OECD (Traboulsee et al. 2018). In response to NEPAD and after the realisation of the significant need in the early years of this century there were pleasures and expectations of increasing official development assistance to Africa in high level that includes the G8 Summit in Kananaskis in the year of 2002 and in Gleneagles in the year of 2005 (Wolinsky et al. 2017). The Paris declaration of 2005 and ACC agenda for action of 2008 were made some specific and included broad commitments to improve effectiveness depending on the five principles which were aligned harmonization managing for results ownership and mutual accountability which is the most significant objective of NEPAD. In the final years of the last decade, levels of development assistance have significantly decreased and therefore the requirement to raise these needs are required in order to satisfy the targets made for the year of 2012.
Still there was some great challenges that remain to be overcome and in this regard it has been seen that there were some indication of progress towards the millennium development goals which were risen, and for an example it can be said that the primary enrolment and the levels of many major social indicators remain far below then the other regions across the world. It has been seen that Africa’s primary enrolment rate remained the lowest in terms of all the nations of the world and secondary and tertiary education intake rates are also significantly low. Apart from that it has been seen that improvements is fewer than five mortality and in the maternal mortality were also under the expectations and most importantly deadly diseases like malaria contribute to the death of nearly 1 million people per year in the continent of Africa (Traboulsee et al. 2018). Progress in the sector of sanitation and drinking water also fell apart as it was evaluated in the first decade of the 21st century. It has been seen that the gender equality is not present how it is expected to be in recent times also which should be considered as a social ill.
Initiatives for Sustainable Development
It can be said that the previous versions of African Action Plan where intended as a fundamental platform for dialogue with international African partners in order to raise the much needed resources for the benefits of the individuals who reside in African continent and also to improve the socio-economic condition along with the hazards of the climate (Planning, N.E.P.A.D. and African Union Commission 2014). The 10th meeting of Africa partnership forum which was held in Tokyo recommended that revision of the previous plans were mandatory and as a result the AFDB together with AUC and along with NAPD agency and un economic Commission for Africa where Actually mandated by AU and NEPAD to revise the African Action Plan following the objective of generating or making a plan with buying from all the important stakeholders (Wolinsky et al. 2017). In this regard it can be said that the revised plan identified the prices of Africa’s developmental areas and also identified that there are needs to strengthen the existing partnerships and also to force the new ones in order to promote and understand the continents key regional priority programs and projects which are relevant to the improvement of the situation.
There have been several approaches to revise the African Action Plan (AAP). Amongst the suggested approaches for revising the plan, major consultations had been taken place with the four leading institutions. The NEPAD agency, AFDB, ECA and AUC along with making frequent visits for determining in the views on the plan, recognised the prioritised goals and objectives and gather relevant information (Montalban et al. 2017). After this, the procedure of final review for validation has been occurred as well. In order to collect the relevant data on projects and programs a varied range of sources had been used for this purpose. After discussions had taken place with the global stakeholders such as the European Union, German agency for technical cooperation, World Bank and OECD, major perspective about their concern and interests had been changed. Therefore the NEPAD steering committee has reviewed the progress of the plan and a draft had been endorsed as well. While selecting the projects and programs it can be seen that the most significant guiding principle of NEPAD is the African leadership and ownership (Kihato, 2018). The main objective was to enhance these to a considerable extent. In accordance to that the entire procedure of selecting the projects and programs for the revised plan should be finally done by the institutions of Africa. The whole procedure of selecting the initiatives and associated activities for AAP covered six specific stages
- The forest 2008 March version of AAP has provided foundation of 56 programs and projects.
- Some definitions of sectors in the plan had been adjusted later on and social affairs capacity development and tourism were added.
- The priority programs and projects had been identified
- A large number of emerging priorities were also considered for further review
- A detailed analysis for prioritising the development alignment and the radius of the programs and projects also provided valid input to the entire procedure.
- A priority review based on different sectors has been done for refining the list and updating the necessary information.
Challenges faced by Africa in achieving these goals
The entire procedure had resulted in wide-ranging and significant changes within the priority list that had been included previously; therefore a major increase had taken place in the number of projects and priority programs as the data showed twenty-eight projects had combined or dropped whereas fifty-two new projects were added. While reviewing the plan, a significant reality has been recognised that the plan is a mere snapshot within the dynamics of development implementation and for the initiatives of projects and programs (Planning, N.E.P.A.D. and African Union Commission 2014). Therefore the NEPAD steering committee had also determined a time-frame of five years for the revised plan. In addition to that it can also be said that this plan had the goal of developing a sustainable flow of continental and regional scale investments over the course of time. It also contains the priority initiatives at every stage of the project and program development starting from the initial development of concepts through assessing the feasibility and implementation procedures.
The fundamental goals and objectives for prioritising the programs and projects assisting to the delivery of the quick and bankable programs which have a strong and regional integration influence. At the initial stage the implementation process showed negligible progress and it has been found out that a very small number of projects related to infrastructure development had reached to the implementation process within this period. As most of the initiatives were under consideration at the initial stage of development, it can be indicated that it was significant to focus on this further stages that are to be taken during the time frame of the plan and developing a sustainable flow of feasible projects and programs in future and accelerate the entire procedure (Seke, Rampa and Legodi 2016). In this case a straight forward procedure of prioritising has been provided with transparency so that each of the project and program is considered in the same sense based on suitable and rational criteria. It can be indicated that a major output of the entire review plan was prioritised list of the programs and projects including their status and readiness level.
It can also be indicated that two major criteria for prioritising the projects considered by NEPAD were the strategic alignment and the development impact. Strategic alignment help to align the projects on the basis of the continental and regional objectives of the NEPAD programs plans and other strategic orientation on the basis of partnership with the donors. On the other hand, developmental impact referred to the worth of a particular project that can be measured in terms of the net financial value regional integration contributing to the financial development and the regional and public products (Akinola and Ndawonde 2016). It can be understood that the former one is less subjective as the strategic alignment can be considered and charged at the initial designing stage of a project whereas the development impact needs appropriate assumptions which is not possible without the real data.
Revising the African Action Plan
After a lot of discussions the projects and programs were assessed on the basis of four major criteria, namely, the beneficiaries referring to the number of countries that are benefited for each of the project; aligning with the objectives referring to the alignment of the projects and programs which is the sector based policy statements of the authorities and get desired impact on strategies; development influence referring to the desired impacts of these projects and programs on the broader objectives such as financial development on the continental and regional integration which were assessed on the gathered information and data; and readiness which referred to the present status of each of the project and program (Akinola and Ndawonde 2016). These projects have also been sequenced, monitored and managed for judging its availability and making the investment decisions based on appropriate analysis and information. This is helpful for the African Union to understand the progress of the projects and programs and to align them with their goals and objectives. Considering the reviews, it is difficult for undertaking methodical and scientific analysis of these programs which can ensure the reliability and consistency of its content. In addition to this, a development stage model has been utilised for reducing the unsystematic utilisation of cost encountered in the plan at the initial stage. NEPAD has also included sectoral policy framework with their plan.
Conclusion
Therefore it can be said that the programs of African Union and its program NEPAD aims to bring in a remarkable change in the social economic condition of African continent and these agencies want to bring in the changes with the help of multilateral business organisations and governments of industrialized countries. It has been observed that the individual to decide in Africa the majority population suffers from numerous diseases gender inequality poverty and climatic hazards and the Government of the African continent is failing to provide them necessary aids and that has aggravated the situation significantly. There lies the importance of restructuring be African action plan for the best interest of the individuals of African continent
Reference list
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Planning, N.E.P.A.D. and African Union Commission, 2014. The Cost of Hunger in Africa: Social and Economic Impact of Child Undernutrition in Egypt, Ethiopia, Swaziland and Uganda.
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Wolinsky, J., Montalban, X., Kappos, L., Hauser, S., Giovannoni, G., de Seze, J., Bar-Or, A., Masterman, D., Bernasconi, C., Wei, W. and Garren, H., 2017. Evaluation of No Evidence of Progression or Active Disease (NEPAD) in Patients with Primary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis in the ORATORIO Trial (P4. 384). Neurology, 88(16 Supplement), pp.P4-384.
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