The World Bank, NEPAD and Africa's development
Date
2011-05-17
Authors
Mokone, Mokote
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Abstract
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