African leaders tackle NEPAD's stiff challenges

• Author: Norbert Funke
• Position: Senior Economist, IMF Institute
• Pages: 11-14

Page 11

More than a year after the creation of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), ministers, governors, and other senior officials from some 20 African countries met in Dakar, Senegal, in mid-December to discuss the challenges confronting the initiative. Participants at the high-level seminar, hosted by the IMF Institute and the Joint Africa Institute, included donor representatives, academics, and staff of regional and international institutions.

Despite progress by an increasing number of countries, Africa's overall economic performance has continued to lag behind that of other developing country regions. Over the past two decades, as noted by Saleh Nsouli, Deputy Director, and Norbert Funke, Senior Economist, IMF Institute, the gap between sub-Saharan Africa's per capita income and that of other regions has widened; its share of world trade has declined; and its share of global foreign direct investment has fallen.

Securing a positive turnaround in Africa's socioeconomic indicators calls for the effective implementation of wide-ranging economic and financial reforms at the country and regional levels. This is the overriding goal of NEPAD, a framework for Africa's renewal, conceived and developed by African leaders and adopted in 2001 by member states of the African Union. Its specific objectives are to promote accelerated growth and sustainable development, eradicate widespread and severe poverty, and halt the marginalization of Africa in the globalization process.

Turning words into action

As President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal stressed when he opened the seminar, the time has come to finance NEPAD and implement its objectives.

Successful implementation will require that participating countries establish appropriate institutional frameworks, generate a strong consensus for reform from the wider public, and attract adequate international support, said Omar Kabbaj, President, African Development Bank. To meet NEPAD's ambitious objectives-including a targeted rate of economic growth of about 7 percent over the next decade-African countries will also need to make an unprecedented effort to consolidate macroeconomic stability and pursue broad-based structural reforms, including a strengthening of institutional capacity, Nsouli...