All eyes on vital Nepad meeting

Leaders of Ghana & eight other African nations and scores of high-ranking world diplomats will meet next week to discuss the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad), an ambitious plan created by Africans to advance economic development.

The presidents of Nigeria, South Africa, Algeria, Senegal, Ghana, Gabon, Lesotho, Zambia and Botswana, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien and scores of foreign ministers will attend the one-day meeting Monday in New York to show support for Nepad.

A key point of the plan is to reward African nations that have succeeded in economic reforms with new development assistance. For decades, financial institutions and Western governments have been pumping aid into African countries whose economies have continued to falter.

The plan replaces previous schemes worked out by the United Nations to assist Africa. One such scheme, the UN New Agenda for the Development of Africa (UN-Nadaf), adopted in 1991, failed after it was found out that it resulted in poorer economic performances.

An international panel this last summer said UN-Nadaf will be terminated at the end of 2002, having failed to reach the objective of bringing an annual average of six percent economic growth in gross national products to African nations.

The panel, headed by Ghana's former finance minister Kwesi Botchwey, recommended that the world community should support Nepad instead.

Nepad also received support at the summit of the world's eight most industrialised countries, or G-8, in June in Calgary, Canada.

Under UN-Nadaf's 10-year existence, 80 million more Africans found themselves living in poverty, and it failed to generate international support. The growth rate throughout most of the decade hovered around three percent.

A UN programme created in 1986, preceding UN-Nadaf, also failed. African leaders have said that for Nepad to succeed, the continent needs peace, security and good governance; improved economic and corporate governance; and regional cooperation and integration.

They are also seeking an annual even percent economic growth rate in Africa, a halving of poverty by 2015 and $64-billion in international aid to support that growth.

Government contributions to development in poor countries fell from more than $28-billion in 1990 to $16,38-billion in 2000.