Egypt and NEPAD

Translated by: Amira Waleed

Reviewed by: Nouran Salah 

NEPAD, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, is an initiative spearheaded by African leaders to foster economic and social progress across the continent. In other words, it is one of the real attempts to develop the African continent and eradicate poverty through cooperating with the international community and Germanic partnership at the level of countries and the level of economic blocs existing within the African number.

The partnership was formed and  by the  of five African countries, which are: Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria, South Africa, and Senegal, and approved by the summit of the Organization of African Unity (later the African Union), which was held in Lusaka,  in July 2001.

NEPAD's work areas include agriculture and food security, natural resource management and climate change, regional integration and infrastructure, in addition to work programs in the infrastructure development sector, human resources development, economic governance and partnerships.

 When the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union) was established, according to the Addis Ababa Declaration on May 25, 1963, its main goal was to complete liberation from colonial control. Many countries on the continent were subject to colonialism, especially areas of Spanish and Portuguese influence,  like how the black people in South Africa suffer from racial discrimination established by the white regime.

The liberation obsession dominated the organization’s work in the first two decades of its life. However, as the entrenchment of the emerging national states over time began to reveal the limits of the organization’s goals, and security crises came to the light, playing a bigger threat to the existence of some countries than colonialism, such as the civil wars in the Congo, Angola, and Chad.

Additionally,   of most countries on the continent and the worsening government debts dictated that the organization rearrange its priorities to enable it to keep pace with the new reality.

The issue of changing the general orientation of the Organization of African Unity from political liberalization to economic and social development at the continental level   the main concern of African summits since the end of the 1970s.

In 1980, a development program known as the “Lagos Plan of Action,” was drawn up, and followed in 1986 by the “Urgent Program for Economic Reform in Africa,”  “African Framework of Reference for Structural Adjustment Programs” in 1989, and then the “Arusha Charter for Popular Participation and Development” in 1990. Nevertheless, all of these plans failed, and the effort of African unity began to focus on developing a new strategy, aware of Africa’s inability to develop successfully and relatively quickly, and proposing   to obtain international support.

Hence, the “New Partnership for Africa’s Development” (NEPAD) was the result of multiple consultations and amendments to development approaches presented by a new generation of African leaders who saw that the liberal political character of the Organization of African Unity was no longer sufficient in light of the urgency of the development need, the continent’s great backwardness, and the marginality of its role at the international level.

The most prominent of these approaches is the Millennium Partnership for African Reform, expressed by the former President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, who unveiled it during the Davos World Economic Forum in 2001.

Before the   Plan, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade Wade had presented to the Francophone Summit in Cameroon in January early 2001, the “Omega Plan,” which included his vision for the “African Renaissance.” The two approaches were merged into a new plan called (The New Initiative for Africa), which The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), of which South Africa, Senegal, Algeria, Nigeria and Egypt were the most important advocates, and who were credited with having it adopted by the African Summit in 2001, finally bore fruit.

The initiative aims to eradicate poverty, achieve sustainable development, correct the marginalization of the African continent, empower women, and integrate the African economy with the global economy. The initiative also emphasizes African ownership of continental development, reliance on internal resources, partnership  African peoples, achieving regional and continental integration,  developing the competitiveness of the countries of the continent. partnering with developed countries in order to  the gap between them and Africa through specific work programs for a set of sectoral priorities.   areas defines NEPAD’s work to achieve its desired goals, which are represented in supporting security and peace in continent, achieving sound political and economic governance, deepening the concepts of democracy and respect for human rights, increasing agricultural productivity, achieving food security, maximizing the volume of intra-African trade, eliminating African exports to global markets, improving the environment, and developing education and research. Scientific.

Furthermore, the work programs also include: Maximizing the use of information technology, health, combating endemic diseases, especially AIDS and malaria, human development, and building African capacities, while working in this context to provide the necessary resources to develop the projects and executive programs necessary to achieve these goals.

NEPAD has two initiatives to mobilize the necessary resources to implement its programmes:

Capital Flows Initiative

It included an estimate of the financial resources required to finance  programs, as the document estimated it at approximately 64 billion US dollars annually (for approximately 15 years). The document stated that bridging this gap would require a significant increase in domestic savings, but it stressed that “most of the required resources should come from “Outside the continent.” Therefore, NEPAD paid great attention to the goals and actions related to mobilizing external resources, focusing on three main axes:

(a) New arrangements to be negotiated with the aim of alleviating external debt.

(b) (and innovative) reforms in the management of foreign development aid and linking it to mutual conditions and commitments between Africa and donors with the aim of increasing the volume of aid and improving its efficiency.

(c) Encouraging the    of foreign private capital, as NEPAD attaches great importance to it in bridging the resource gap.

Market Access Initiative

NEPAD considers improving the ability of African exports to access global markets a key aspect of the resource mobilization process. The initiative summarizes the way to achieve this in one principle: Diversification of production. This diversification comes from the proper exploitation of Africa's natural resource base through measures and reforms in the  , manufacturing, mining, tourism and services sectors, as well as the advancement of the private sector, as well as taking measures to encourage African exports at the African and global levels, and removing the non-tariff barriers they face in   countries' markets.

Regarding the content of the “new global partnership” proposed by NEPAD, it includes two aspects:

Firstly: maintaining, rationalizing, and maximizing the benefits that currently exist between Africa and development partners.

Secondly: Negotiating a new relationship with developed countries and multilateral organizations. These new relationships involve goals and performance standards agreed upon between the two parties, and mutual responsibilities and obligations.

NEPAD holds developed countries and multilateral organizations responsibilities and obligations in certain areas, of which the document enumerates twelve areas and is included in paragraph (185) of the document. In exchange for these responsibilities and commitments, African leaders undertake, for their part, to implement the measures contained in Chapter Three of NEPAD (paragraph 49).

Implementation mechanisms:

 the New Partnership for Africa's Development represents the content of the seventh and final chapter of the document, which refers to some foundations and principles related to implementation, as follows:

• Preparing a set of urgent programs to be implemented quickly in cooperation with development partners. These are programs in the following four areas: infectious diseases - information and communications technology - debt reduction - and market access.
• Proposing a number of projects of vital importance for integrated development at the regional level, and a detailed list of these programs has been placed on the NEPAD website.
• Establishing an apparatus to manage NEPAD’s affairs. In this regard, the document stipulated the establishment of an implementation committee of African heads of state consisting of the heads of ten countries, two countries for each of the five regions in Africa, in addition to the five founding countries of NEPAD: Algeria, South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal, Egypt.

NEPAD includes a number of main bodies and associated committees to achieve its goals, which are:

Presidential Implementation Committee: It includes the heads of the five countries that initiated the initiative, along with the heads of 15 other countries representing the five geographical regions of the continent, with 4 countries for each region. Elections are held periodically for African countries to join the committee for a period of two years. Based on regional consultations within the Union, the committee is responsible for promoting the initiative, gaining international support for it, defining policies and priorities for its work program and following up on their implementation, and submitting periodic reports on its work to the African Union Summit.

Steering Committee: It is composed of representatives of the heads of state who are members of the Implementation Committee, and is responsible for preparing detailed plans for the work program and action to implement the initiative, in addition to its role in managing the dialogue with development partners - at the level of personal representatives - to gain support and support from the G8 and the countries that advanced the efforts. Africa to achieve development on the continent. ‏

African Peer Review Mechanism: It consists of heads of states and governments that are members of the mechanism. Its establishment is based on the statement of the African Union summit in Durban in 2002, regarding democracy and good governance. This means a mechanism for selecting and evaluating the state's performance by other countries. The ultimate purpose of the mechanism is to help the state that is subject to the review process improve its development performance in the decision-making process and choose the best means with commitments to recognized standards and principles. It consists of heads of states and governments that are members of the mechanism. Egypt joined the mechanism in March 2004.

Secretariat: Based in Pretoria, it acts as a technical body to assist the implementation and management committees in performing their tasks.

About a year after its launch, the United Nations General Assembly organized a high-level dialogue on NEPAD on September 16, 2002, and then adopted NEPAD in November of the same year as a framework for Africa’s development, and called on the United Nations organs, its specialized agencies and other development partners to harmonize Its programs are directed to support development efforts in Africa with the NEPAD work programs. In follow-up to this decision, the Secretary-General of the United Nations prepares a periodic report on the progress achieved in implementing the initiative, based on the responses he receives from various parties.

NEPAD holds annual summit meetings between the heads of the five countries that sponsored the initiative, and the leaders of the countries of the group, which began since the Genoa Summit in July 2001, with the aim of studying ways to support African efforts in putting the initiative into practice. The Kanataskis Summit 2002 is the most prominent of these meetings. It issued the so-called Africa Action Plan as a joint work program to support the implementation of NEPAD.

In addition to periodic meetings that bring together representatives of the heads of the five countries, members of the NEPAD Steering Committee, and personal representatives of the leaders of the group’s countries, to discuss ways of cooperation to support the implementation of the initiative’s work programs and follow up on the recommendations and decisions issued by the summit.

Egypt pays great attention to NEPAD, by supporting its strategies and plans to contribute to the development of the African continent, based on Egypt being one of the founding countries of the initiative, as well as its keenness to preserve the success story that NEPAD began as a mark of distinction in African development topics and efforts, through its fundamental role.  maximizing cooperation and integration between African countries to confront the continent’s problems of increasing poverty and low development rates, Egypt has an effective and leadership role in formulating social and economic development programs in Africa, which was embodied in its participation in launching and supporting the NEPAD Initiative, until it has become the main African entity to present the challenges. Development of the continent at the African and international levels.

In May 2017, the second NEPAD conference was  , which was held for the first time in Egypt with the participation of 17 African countries.

In September 2018, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) honored Egypt within the framework of the activities of the African Ministers of Environment Conference in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. This is in appreciation of Egypt’s efforts in the field of environment in Africa during Egypt’s presidency of the conference from 2015 to 2017.

In February 2023, Egypt took over the presidency of the Steering Committee of the African Union Development Agency (NEPAD) for a period of two years, from Rwandan President Paul Kagame, with the unanimous consent of the committee members to support Egypt’s candidacy. This came during President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s participation, via video conference technology, in the work of the fortieth session of the Steering Committee of Heads of State and Government of the African Union Development Agency (NEPAD), which was held with the participation of African heads of state and government who are members of the committee.

English Language Coordinator: Asmaa Ahmed