PAP legislators criticize NEPAD’s ineffectiveness

PAP legislators criticize NEPAD’s ineffectiveness

BY GEORGE KAGAME
Johannesburg


African legislators have criticized the New Partnership for Africa’s Development initiative as being inefficient in addressing crucial programmes on the continent for which the initiative was created.

NEPAD was formed in 2002 as one of the changes in the new African Union that replaced the Organization of African Unity. Debating on NEPAD’s report on the state of infrastructure in Africa, the MPs said NEPAD is a well elaborated document on paper but its enforcement remains elusive while its designers continue to travel to conferences in “air conditioned rooms” while the grassroots Africans which it seeks to help continue to revel in poverty. The MPs were discussing the state of Infrastructure in Africa during the 10th session of the Pan African Parliament 10 session in Johannesburg today.

They were reacting to a presentation by Algerian MP, Dr. Boudina Mostepha who emphasized that the state of transport networks in Africa was “very very poor”, he suggested that the transport sector on the continent should be privatized so as to increase its efficiency.

Suzan Vos (South Africa) said has a large deficit in transport infrastructure with only 1.9km of the continent’s massive landscape covered by a road system, she added that these roads are not only of low density but they are mainly poor quality.

Vos said as a result of this poor state of physical infrastructure on the continent, it was very expensive to transport goods and services across boarders among African countries and this had a great impact on the prevailing high levels of poverty in Africa. She added that 25 percent of total investment budgets on the continent were taken by transport costs and hindered integration measures across Africa.

Rachael Chebet (Kenya) said that corruption is the single most important cause of sabotage in developing a vibrant infrastructure network on the continent. She attributed the culture of political patronage in many African countries as dangerous because incompetent companies end up getting most contracts to build roads, health centres, railway lines on the basis of their relationship with policy makers. “We need to depoliticize infrastructural projects because projects won out of political patronage many of these projects only survive for a very short time.”

Sunnir Dawarkasing (Mauritius) called upon African policy makers to support the proposed Inga energy on River Congo in the Democratic Republic of Congo; “the Inga project will solve all Africa’s energy requirements once and for all, we need to raise the 80bn USD to fund it.”





The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) is an economic development program of the African Union. NEPAD was adopted at the 37th session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government in July 2001 in Lusaka, Zambia. NEPAD aims to provide an overarching vision and policy framework for accelerating economic co-operation and integration among African countries.