Can NEPAD Rescue Africa through the Millennium Development Goals?

That the majority of Africans are materially poor is hardly disputable, nor very surprising. After all the entire continent has been dealt several unfavorable blows: A dehumanizing and devastating global slave trade, colonialism, and multiple European backed commercial ventures with the view of exploiting the riches and wealth of the continent, providing little institutional, infrastructural and human capital when African countries began to achieve independence during the past century. In the more recent past, the Cold war and post cold war politics, protracted conflicts, structural adjustment programmes and HIV/Aids pandemic have left the continent poorer than before. Unlike East Asia, which has enjoyed a dramatic reduction in the absolute number of people living in poverty over the last 15 years, sub Saharan Africa has seen dramatic increases in both the total number of poor people and the fraction of its population that is poor. This sad reality has not gone unnoticed, various initiatives have been adopted even though most of them are tantamount to rhetoric, from Tony Blair's Africa commission, the G7 finance ministers' debt relief, the live 8 concerts, the make poverty history campaign and the G8 Gleneagles promises to the United Nations 2005 summit, Africa's gains seem to be reduced to some kind of public relations exercise indicating that the world has taken stock of the plight of the continent. But the problems of the continent persist- debt and inequitable trade are at the heart of Africa's problems and sometimes powerful elites within Africa collaborate with exploiters in the North at the detriment of their own nations. During the last half century, the economic performance of the developing world has been far from uniform. Developing countries were polarized into those that made great progress in catching up and those that were mired in economic stagnation. Many African countries belong to the second group. The question, which arises is, what could be done in order to help these countries to move from the stagnation to sustainable growth and development? During the last five decades, many attempts were explored and undertaken without any remarkable results. In 2000, 189 states endorsed the Millennium Development Goals, covering an array of targets with aspirations of reaching these goals by 2015. One year after, the New Partnership for Africa's Development, a vision and strategic framework for Africa's renewal was launched as a driver for African countries to move from long severe poverty, and consequently in reaching the MDGs. In this paper, we would like to share how policies contained within the NEPAD programme are key elements in achieving the MDGs. The first part of the paper analyses the whole vision behind the NEPAD programme, with the emphasis on the role that must play various African governments. The second part discusses the Millennium Development Goals and their targets. The third part develops a model for an effective and efficient implementation of these two initiatives, and how they could lead to a sustainable development within the African continent. The last section focuses on various roles African governments must play in order to achieve the various targets developed within the Millennium Declaration.