The World Bank, NEPAD and Africa's development

Date
2011-05-17
Authors
Mokone, Mokote
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After many years of a stale mate process changes in development discourse precipitated a new understanding of the special case of developing countries. This new environment allowed for regional initiatives like NEPAD to emerge and advance a new framework on Africa’s development and engagement with the international community. The paper shows how through the establishment of NEPAD there was a revival of the African agenda and new attention was given to development issues of the continent. The initiative has the support and backing of the World Bank to ensure its sustainability and effectiveness in a globalised international system. The research argues that the relationship between NEPAD and the Bank is a crucial ingredient in this. This results better policy development, implementation and project management. The implication that this carries for African policy making is that the continent has to adapt itself to changes in the international system. It is the adoption of neo-liberal policies into the framework of NEPAD has ensured its survival. This has allowed it to gain acceptance and support from leading international role players, such as the EU, IMF and most important the World Bank. It is being heralded as a breakthrough in development policy from the continent. This is because it puts the responsibility of finding new ways of solving the continent’s problems upon African’s themselves and creates an opportunity to engage the international community in this Africa-led process. The partnership is sustained by shared values between the Bank’s framework and NEPAD. That development must be a long term strategy; it must be country owned and drive; it should strive to build strategic partnerships with the private sector and the international community to support projects and it must have clear, realistic and achievable goals. The complementary policy frameworks result in the design and implementation of effective projects between NEPAD and the Bank. This results in the endorsement of a unified development objective and renders the partnership strategic in promoting effective development progress
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