Resolution on Nepad

Civil Society Indaba (South Africa), Johannesburg
Resolution on Nepad
4 May 2002

The Civil Society Indaba met in full session on the 2nd to 4th May 2002 at the NUM Training Centre in Johannesburg. Delegates from various civil society formation, including rural communities, urban communities, youth, women, First Nations Indigenous people, Non-governmental organisations, provinces and others, attended the meeting and deliberated on various issues concerning the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

After extensive deliberations on the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), the Civil Society Indaba agreed on the following resolution:

Noting

• That Africa and her people face daunting challenges. Among many challenges is the challenge of lifting its millions of sons and daughters out of poverty, and restoring Africa’s dignity and self-respect.
• That this challenge is made all the more daunting because the forces of neoliberal globalisation which now dominate the globe are the single most important cause of Africa’s misery, poverty, marginalisation and exploitation.
• That Nepad is being widely promoted as a path of sustainable development for the African continent and its peoples.
• That Nepad is being presented as a programme that will lift Africa’s people out of poverty, and thereby reverse centuries of impoverishment, marginalisation and exploitation.
• That African governments, and in particular the South African government, will be presenting Nepad as a platform of African governments at the World Summit for Sustainable Development to be held in Johannesburg in August 2002.
• That Nepad has been imposed on the continent by the few governments and elites, supported the countries of the North and the Bretton Woods Institutions (World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation). Africa and her people have not been involved in devising this path of development.

Further Noting

• That Nepad embraces the forces of neoliberal globalisation, and promotes these forces as a cure for Africa’s ills.
• That Nepad embraces the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation, and other international institutions of the process of neoliberal globalisation, as partners in Africa’s development. These institutions have a long history of plunder and exploitation of Africa’s resources and her peoples.
• That Nepad and the strategies it adopts pose a grave danger to the preservation and rehabilitation of the environment. Africa and the world’s environment have suffered profoundly from unhindered profit maximisation, and from the processes that have impoverished Africa and her people.
• That the development path adopted by Nepad will push Africa and her people further into poverty, ill-health, hunger and marginalisation. In this respect the following policies of Nepad deserve special mention:
  
• The leading role of the private sector in development

We believe that the private sector’s drive for profit maximisation at all costs is one of major contributing factors to Africa’s present condition.

• Privatisation of the provision of infrastructure
  
  We believe that privatisation of services and infrastructure provision has led to these services being inaccessible to the majority of the people, and to job loss and impoverishment.
  
• Free Trade
  
  We believe that the policies of so-called free trade, promoted by the World Trade Organisation and its associated institutions, has led to the destruction of Africa’s industries and the livelihoods of its people.
  
• Promotion of a market orientated agriculture
  
  We believe that over the years Africa has been forced into cash crop production, and this has led to profound food insecurity on the continent. A further drive for cash crop production will accelerate impoverishment and food insecurity.
  
• Increasing direct foreign investment
  
  We believe that so-called foreign direct investment has only benefited the multinational corporations that extract Africa’s wealth and exploit her people. Over many years foreign investment has failed to live up to the promise of more jobs and prosperity for the continent.
  
• World Bank inspired “poverty reduction strategies”
  
  We believe that the World Bank and the other multilateral institutions that Nepad embraces have a dismal record of reducing poverty on the continent. If anything, through their structural adjustment programmes these institutions have deepened Africa’s poverty.
  
• Debt reduction strategies based on the HIPC initiative
  
  Nepad embraces debt reduction strategies that have been set up by the International Monetary Fund. We believe that these strategies, like the Highly Indebted Poor Countries initiative that Nepad champions, are meant to perpetuate the enslavement of Africa and her people to the creditor nations and banks. Nepad fails to even call for the cancellation of Africa’s debt.

We also note that

• The South African government has used Nepad as a way of extending and imposing its policies of Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) onto the continent as a whole.
• That Gear has led to massive job loss and impoverishment in South Africa, and has been opposed by all progressive forces of civil society.

We therefore resolve

• To reject Nepad as development path for the continent and its people.
• To join with other progressive forces to raise awareness about Nepad and the dangers it posses for Africa and her people.
• To join with other progressive forces on the continent to campaign against the adoption of Nepad as a development path for Africa.