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From: "Africa Action" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Thu, 2 May 2002 11:52:46 -0500
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Africa: Accra Declaration on Development
Africa: Accra Declaration on Development
Date distributed (ymd): 020502
Document reposted by Africa Action
Africa Policy Electronic Distribution List: an information
service provided by AFRICA ACTION (incorporating the Africa
Policy Information Center, The Africa Fund, and the American
Committee on Africa). Find more information for action for
Africa at http://www.africaaction.org
+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
Region: Continent-Wide
Issue Areas: +economy/development+ +political/rights+
SUMMARY CONTENTS:
This posting contains the Declaration on Africa's Development
Challenges adopted by participants in the conference held in Accra
on April 23-26 by the Council for Development of Social Science
Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and Third World Network (TWN) -
Africa. The statement provides a concise and clear statement of
position, including critical comments on the New Economic
Partnership for Africa (NEPAD) being promoted by African leaders,
but also an outline of an alternative framework.
Note: the e-mail version of this posting contains the English text
and the list of participants only. The archived version on the
Africa Action web site
(at http://www.africaaction.org/docs02/accr0204.htm) will contain
the French text as well.
For more information:
CODESRIA, Avenue Cheikh Anta Diop x Canal IV, BP 3304, Dakar,
Senegal; Telephone: +221 852 98 22/23; Fax: +221 824 12 89;
E-mail: [log in to unmask]; Web: http://www.codesria.org.
Third World Network - Africa, 9 Ollenu Street, East Legon, P.O. Box
AN19452, Accra-North, Ghana; tel: 233 21 503669/500419/511189;
fax: 233 21 511188; E-mail: [log in to unmask] Web:
http://www.twnafrica.org (under construction at this time).
For other recent postings particularly relevant to these issues,
see http://www.africaaction.org/docs02/adf0202.htm
http://www.africaaction.org/docs02/ox0203.htm
http://www.africaaction.org/docs02/wat0203.htm
and
http://www.africaaction.org/docs01/eca0112.htm
The official NEPAD document adopted by African leaders is available
on several web sites, but most conveniently, along with other
relevant documents, at http://www.uneca.org/nepad (The official
NEPAD web site at http://www.nepad.org is highly user-unfriendly).
Analyses and reactions from non-governmental African sources,
although they vary in tone, are overwhelmingly critical. For a
broad collection of links to critiques and other statements on
NEPAD, see
http://www.web.net/~iccaf/debtsap/nepad.htm
The original African Alternative Framework to Structural
Adjustment Programs, from 1989, is available on the Africa Action
web site at:
http://www.africaaction.org/african-initiatives/aafall.htm
+++++++++++++++++end profile++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
DECLARATION ON AFRICA'S DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES
(Adopted at end of Joint CODESRIA-TWN-AFRICA Conference on
Africa's Development Challenges in the Millennium, Accra 23-26
April, 2002)
1. From the 23 to 26 April, 2002, we, African scholars and activist
intellectuals working in academic institutions, civil society
organisations and policy institutions from 20 countries in Africa,
as well as colleagues and friends from Asia, Europe, North America
and South America met at a conference jointly organised by the
Council for Development and Social Science Research in Africa
(CODESRIA) and the Third World Network-Africa (TWN-Africa) to
deliberate on Africa's developmental challenges in the new
millennium.
2. Our deliberations covered such issues as Africa's initiatives
for addressing development; Africa and the world trading system;
mobilising financing for development in Africa; citizenship,
democracy and development; education, health social services and
development, and gender equity and equality in development.
Challenges to the space of Africa's own thinking on development
3. In our deliberations, we recalled the series of initiatives by
Africans themselves aimed at addressing the developmental
challenges of Africa, in particular the Lagos Plan of Action and
the companion African Alternative Framework for Structural
Adjustment. Each time, these initiatives were counteracted and
ultimately undermined by policy frameworks developed from outside
the continent and imposed on African countries. Over the past
decades, a false consensus has been generated around the
neo-liberal paradigm promoted through the Bretton Woods
Institutions and the World Trade Organisation. This stands to
crowd out the rich tradition of Africa's own alternative thinking
on development. It is in this context that the proclaimed African
initiative, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD),
which was developed in the same period as the United Nations
Economic Commission for Africa's Compact for African Recovery, as
well as the World Bank's Can Africa Claim the 21st Century?, were
discussed.
4. The meeting noted the uneven progress of democratisation and in
particular of the expansion of space for citizen expression and
participation. It also acknowledged the contribution of citizen's
struggles and activism to this expansion of the political space,
and for putting critical issues of development on the public
agenda External and internal obstacles to Africa's economic
development
5. The meeting noted that the challenges confronting Africa's
development come from two inter-related sources: (a) constraints
imposed by the hostile international economic and political order
within which our economies operate; and (b) domestic weaknesses
deriving from socio-economic and political structures and
neo-liberal structural adjustment policies.
6. The main elements of the hostile global order include, first,
the fact that African economies are integrated into the global
economy as exporters of primary commodities and importers of
manufactured products, leading to terms of trade losses.
Reinforcing this, secondly, have been the policies of
liberalisation, privatisation and deregulation as well as an
unsound package of macro-economic policies imposed through
structural adjustment conditionality by the World Bank and the
IMF. These have now been institutionalised within the WTO through
rules, agreements and procedures, which are biased against our
countries. Finally, the just mentioned external and internal
policies and structures have combined to generate unsustainable
and unjustifiable debt burden which has crippled Africa's
economies and undermined the capacity of Africa's ownership of
strategies for development .
7. The external difficulties have exacerbated the internal
structural imbalances of our economies, and, together with
neo-liberal structural adjustment policies, inequitable
socio-economic and political structures, have led to the
disintegration of our economies and increased social and gender
inequity. In particular, our manufacturing industries have been
destroyed; agricultural production (for food and other domestic
needs is in crisis; public services have been severely weakened;
and the capacity of states and governments in Africa to make and
implement policies in support of balanced and equitable national
development emasculated. The costs associated with these have
fallen disproportionately on marginalized and subordinated groups
of our societies, including workers, peasants, small producers.
The impact has been excessively severe on women and children.
8. Indeed, the developments noted above have reversed policies and
programmes and have dismantled institutions in place since
independence to create and expand integrated production across and
between our economies in agriculture, industry, commerce, finance,
and social services. These were programmes and institutions which
have, in spite of their limitations, sought to address the
problems of weak internal markets and fragmented production
structures as well as economic imbalances and social inequities
within and between nations inherited from colonialism, and to
redress the inappropriate integration of our economies in the
global order. The associated social and economic gains, generated
over this period have been destroyed.
9. The above informed our reflections on the NEPAD. We concluded
that, while many of its stated goals may be well-intentioned, the
development vision and economic measures that it canvases for the
realisation of these goals are flawed. As a result, NEPAD will
not contribute to addressing the developmental problems mentioned
above. On the contrary, it will reinforce the hostile external
environment and the internal weaknesses that constitute the major
obstacles to Africa's development. Indeed, in certain areas like
debt, NEPAD steps back from international goals that have been won
through global mobilisation and struggle.
10. The most fundamental flaws of NEPAD, which reproduce the
central elements of the World Bank's Can Africa Claim the 21st
Century and the ECA's Compact for African Recovery, include:
a) the neo-liberal economic policy framework at the heart of the
plan, and which repeats the structural adjustment policy packages
of the preceding two decades and over-looks the disastrous effects
of those policies;
(b) the fact that in spite of its proclaimed recognition of the
central role of the African people to the plan, the African people
have not played any part in the conception, design and formulation
of the NEPAD;
(c) notwithstanding its stated concerns for social and gender
equity, it adopts the social and economic measures that have
contributed to the marginalisation of women
(d) that in spite of claims of African origins, its main targets
are foreign donors, particularly in the G8
(e) its vision of democracy is defined by the needs of creating a
functional market;
(f) it under-emphasises the external conditions fundamental to
Africa's developmental crisis, and thereby does not promote any
meaningful measure to manage and restrict the effects of this
environment on Africa development efforts. On the contrary, the
engagement that is seeks with institutions and processes like the
World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, the United States Africa Growth and
Opportunity Act, the Cotonou Agreement, will further lock Africa's
economies disadvantageously into this environment;
(g) the means for mobilisation of resources will further the
disintegration of African economies that we have witnessed at the
hands of structural adjustment and WTO rules; Call for Action
11. To address the developmental problems and challenges
identified above, we call for action at the national, continental
and international levels to implement the measures described
below.
12. In relation to the external environment, action must be taken
towards stabilisation of commodity prices; reform of the
international financial system (to prevent debt, exchange rate
instability and capital flow volatility) as well as of the World
Bank and the IMF; an end to IMF/World Bank structural adjustment
programmes; and fundamental changes to the existing agreements of
the WTO regime, as well as stop the attempts to expand the scope
to this regime to new areas including investment, competition and
government procurement. Most pressing of all, Africa's debt must
be cancelled.
13. At the local, national and regional levels, development policy
must promote agriculture, industry, services including health and
public education, and must be protected and supported through
appropriate trade, investment and macro- economic policy measures.
A strategy for financing must seek to mobilise and build on
internal and intra-African resources through imaginative savings
measures; reallocation of expenditure away from wasteful items
including excessive military expenditure, corruption and
mismanagement; creative use of remittances of Africans living
abroad; corporate taxation; retention and re- investment of
foreign profits; and the prevention of capital flight, and the
leakage of resources through practices of tax evasion practised by
foreign investors and local elites. Foreign investment while
necessary, must be carefully balanced and selected to suit
national objectives.
14. Above all, these measures require the reconstitution of the
developmental state: a state for which social equity, social
inclusion, national unity and respect for human rights form the
basis of economic policy; a state which actively promotes, and
nurtures the productive sectors of the economy; actively engages
appropriately in the equitable and balanced allocation and
distribution of resources among sectors and people; and most
importantly a state that is democratic and which integrates
people's control over decision making at all levels in the
management, equitable use and distribution of social resources.
The Challenge for African scholars and activist intellectuals
15. Recognising that, by raising anew the question of Africa's
development as an Africa-wide concern, NEPAD has brought to the
fore the question of Africa's autonomous initiatives for
development, we will engage with the issues raised in NEPAD as
part of our efforts to contribute to the debate and discussions on
African development.
16. In support of our broader commitment to contribute to
addressing Africa's development challenges, we undertake to work
both collectively and individually, in line with our capacities,
skills and institutional location, to promote a renewed
continent-wide engagement on Africa's own development initiatives.
To this end, we shall deploy our research, training and advocacy
skills and capacities to contribute to the generation and
dissemination of knowledge of the issues at stake; engage with and
participate in the mobilisation of social groups around their
interests and appropriate strategies of development; and engage
with governments and policy institutions at local, national,
regional and continental levels. We shall continue our
collaboration with our colleagues in the global movement.
17. Furthermore, we call,
(a) for the reassertion of the primacy of the question and paradigm
of national and regional development on the agenda of social
discourse and intellectual engagement and advocacy;
(b) on Africa's scholars and activist intellectuals within African
and in the Diaspora, to join forces with social groups whose
interests and needs are central to the development of Africa;
(c) African scholars and activist intellectuals and organisations
to direct their research and advocacy to some of the pressing
questions that confront African policy and decision making at
international levels (in particular negotiations in the WTO and
under the Cotonou agreement), and domestically and regionally;
(d) upon our colleagues in the global movement, to strengthen our
common struggles, in solidarity. We ask our colleagues in the North
to intervene with their governments on behalf of our struggles,
and our colleagues in the South to strengthen South-South
co-operation.
18. We pledge ourselves to carry forward the positions and
conclusions of this conference. And we encourage CODESRIA and
TWN-Africa to explore, together with other interested parties,
mechanisms and processes for follow-up to the deliberations and
conclusions of this conference.
Accra, April 26, 2002.
********************************************************
AFRICA AND THE DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES OF THE 21st CENTURY
Participants list
Name, Country
Jimi O. Adesina, South Africa
Babatunde A. Ahonsi, Nigeria
Amb. James Aggrey-Orleans, Ghana
Alphonse Agnero, Ghana
Akou,te Akakpo-Vida, Canada
Emmanuel Akwetey, Ghana
Rudolf Amenga-Etego, Ghana
Alfred Anangwe, Kenya
Afua Ansre, Ghana
Vladimir Antwi-Danso, Ghana
Issa Aremu, Nigeria
Linus Atarah, Ghana
S. B. Authur, Ghana
Jean-Christophe Boungou Bazika, Congo
Sheila Bunwaree, Senegal
Nana K. A. Busia, UK
Bonnie Campbell, Canada
Jennifer Campbell, Ghana
Tayeb Chenntouf, Algeria
Chukwu-Emeka Chikezie, UK
Mawuli Dake, Ghana
Abdulai Darimani, Ghana
Asayehgn Desta, USA
Romanus Dinye, Ghana
Pauline Dsani, Ghana
Justin Forsyth, UK
Joachim Emmanuel Goma-Thethet, Congo
Claudie Gosselin, Canada
Yao Graham, Ghana
Awudu Ahmed Gumah, Ghana
Kiaouga Haoua, Niger
Tetteh Hormeku-Ajei, Ghana
Adul-Nashiru Issahaku, Ghana
Nancy Kachingwe, Zimbabwe
Richard Kamidza, Zimbabwe
Kingsley Karimu, Ghana
Dot Keet, South Africa
Martin Khor, Malaysia
Tetteh A. Kofi, USA
Kwame Kuffour, Ghana
Eyako Y. G. Kumodzie, Ghana
Eddy Maloka, South Africa
Armstrong Matiu Adejo, Nigeria
Marjorie Mbilinyi, Tanzania
Roger W. Mededji, Ghana
John Mihevc, Canada
Sam Moyo, Zimbabwe
Sethunya Tsepho Mphinyane, Botswana
Muthoni Muriu, UK
Jane Nalunga, Uganda
Asene Honore G'Nkama, Cameroun
Lamine Ndiaye, Senegal
Marinna Nyamekye, Ghana
Warren Nyamugasira, Uganda
John Nyoagbe, Ghana
Kingsley Ofei-Nkansah, Ghana
Adebayo Olukoshi, Senegal
Samuel Oppong-Boadi, Ghana
Daniel Owusu-Koranteng, Ghana
Elisabeth Paul, Belgium
Abdul Rashid Pelpuo, Ghana
Greg Ramm, Ghana
Zo Randriamaro, Ghana
Carole Samdup, Canada
Sekou Sangar, France
Akilagpa Sawyerr, Ghana
Bruno Sonko, Senegal
J. Habib Sy, Senegal
Ferdinand Tay, Ghana
Ian Taylor, Botswana
Marema Toure, Senegal
Tsihikala B. Tshikaba, Ghana
Dzodzi Tsikata, Ghana
Chibuike Uche, Nigeria
Laurant Umas, Ghana
Pauline Vande-Pallen, Ghana
Yanusa Z. Ya'u, Nigeria
***********************************************************
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