By IPS Correspondents
MAPUTO, Jul 10 2003 (IPS)

African leaders are beginning to sharply focus their attention on finding ways the New Partnership for Africa’s Development – a programme to kick-start the development of the continent – can improve the daily lives of their people.

The theme of the African Union (AU) summit being held in Maputo, Mozambique, from Jul. 10 to Jul. 12 is ensuring the implementation of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report 2003, launched at the summit, called on African leaders to prioritise the social needs of their people.

Addressing African heads of state on Thursday, UNDP’s Mark Malloch-Brown said: "With this report, the UNDP argues that recent formulas of good governance and open markets are necessary – but not enough. For most on our watch list of almost 60 "priority countries" – of which again almost half are in Africa – lack of progress is not about lack of trying to put good institutions, policies and growth in place.

"It is about supplementing those necessary steps by addressing the deeper structural handicaps such as geographic isolation, exclusion of women and a deterioration of top soils that is undermining the agricultural base," he said.

Malloch-Brown said Mauritius, Tanzania, Seychelles and Mozambique, have achieved sustained gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates, close to the seven to eight percent NEPAD identifies as necessary for Africa to halve poverty levels by 2015.

Egypt, the Gambia, Cape Verde and Tunisia, he said, have reduced child mortality by a third or more.

Senegal and Uganda have shown the way to stem the spread of HIV and AIDS, the pandemic that is devastating the continent and eroding its human resource capacity and prospects for economic growth, he said.

The UNDP administrator called on the donors to increase aid and debt relief for poor countries and break down barriers, like subsidies, which keep developing countries’ goods out of rich markets.

"The dumping of subsidised (U.S.) cotton has led to the loss of earnings of up to 250 million U.S. dollars to West African economies," wrote aid activists Irungu Houghton and Shehnilla Mohamed in the Mail&Guardian newspaper in Johannesburg last week.

"While new donor commitments, which should if – and it’s a big ‘if’ – pledges are honoured, reach 16 billion U.S. dollars by 2006, nearly half of which should come to Africa, it is way short of the 50 billion U.S. dollars additional aid which is needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals’" said Malloch-Brown.

Driven by South African President, Thabo Mbeki, and Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo, NEPAD has also been criticised for focusing too much on winning better trade and aid deals from the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised countries.

G8 comprises Japan, Germany, Italy, Britain, Canada, the United States and Russia.

Under the donor pressure, NEPAD is committing African leaders to maintaining better standards of political and economic governance on the continent in return for better trade and aid deals with the wealthy nations.

NEPAD is seeking 64 billion U.S. dollars a year from foreign investors for Africa’s recovery.

AU leaders, meeting in Maputo, have called on African countries to turn NEPAD’s grand plans into real projects to improve the lives of the more than 350 million people, over 50 percent of Africa’s population, who live below the poverty line of one U.S. dollar a day.

"Countries should find national development projects to complement efforts to win international support," said the Mozambican minister for foreign affairs, Leonardo Santos Simao.

Excerpt: