African leaders gathered on Tuesday to discuss the final details in the integration of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) into the organs of the African Union (AU), with a new proposal for a treaty establishing NEPAD as an organ of the soon to be formed AU Authority says AUMONITOR.
The leaders are expected to approve a radical remake of the key organs governing the NEPAD structure, putting a ministerial team at the top management of the organisation – board of directors – and making the organisation’s chief executive an AU employee.
AU Commission chairperson Jean Ping told the African leaders attending the NEPAD heads of State implementing committee meeting that the process of integrating the NEPAD into the organs of the AU was nearly complete and that just a few challenges remained to be ironed out. He said a team of experts appointed to work out the finer details of importing the NEPAD secretariat into the AU organs had concluded a new treaty that would be required to designate NEPAD as an organ of the AU Authority, expected to be declared at the end of the Sirte Summit.
NEPAD was formed as a programme aimed at addressing Africa’s development challenges, and it was seen as a paradigm shift in Africa’s relation with its development partners. But the ideals of the NEPAD appeared to duplicate the work of the AU, and a campaign to have the NEPAD programme taken over by the AU kicked off. NEPAD sought to entrench ideals such as good governance, poverty eradication and offered an element of peer review, meant to push for an equal progress of democracy and good governance across Africa.
Speaking during the opening session of the NEPAD steering committee meeting, Ping said the harmonisation of NEPAD programmes with the activities of the AU Commission had proved to be more challenging than initially anticipated. The Kenyan consultants who have worked out the structure of the NEPAD have proposed that it should become a technical body of the AU, whose work will be to translate AU’s social and economic development policies into regional projects and continental projects. The AUC would then take the lead as a policy-making body.
Ping regretted that the progress had been slow in making the AU and the NEPAD to work in conformity with one another, adding: ‘Progress has been too slow. To accelerate integration of NEPAD into the AU, promote joint working, cooperation, coordination and reduce overlap, I will exert all efforts to ensure that this process is expeditiously completed,’ he said.
