NEWS HEADLINE

By Laolu Akande New York, NY, USA

frican leaders on Monday at the on-going UN General Assembly, alongside the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan reviewed the New Partnership for African Development plan and concluded that the programme is and should be seen as an African initiative and not one designed by outsiders for African consumption.

But Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo insisted that the issue of debt cancellation remains crucial if there was to be any meaningful development of the African contient.

Obasanjo argued that in order to cut the number of Africans living below the poverty line by half in 2015, "Africa would need $64 billion annually for NEPAD projects," and for him that makes the issue of debt cancellation, important for consideration.

Obasanjo had arrived New York on Saturday and addressed the UN General Assembly on Sunday morning. He also, traditionally, was scheduled to have a meeting with the UN Seceretary General after his speech to the assembly on Sunday although there was no confirmation of the meeting or details discussed.

But UN sources indicated that Nigeria paid up its membership dues to the UN by Friday last week putting Nigeria's name on the UN Honor List, which is the list of all nations who have met their financial obligation to the UN.

About 102 countries have made that list leaving about less than 90 other member nations who are yet to pay their dues in full. Nigeria paid a sum of $621,000, which was due last January.

President Olusegun Obasanjo at the UN plenary session on NEPAD Monday, a forum that was attended by several African heads of States and ministers said through NEPAD, Africa should look forward to reversing the misfortunes of the past.

Through NEPAD, the goals of restoring peace and security in Africa, managing and preventing conflict, good governance, eradicating poverty and acute income disparities between rich and poor, promoting accelerated growth and sustainable development, and halting the marginalization of Africa would be pursued, the Nigerian president noted.

Obasanjo added that through NEPAD, the peoples and governments of Africa had taken their destiny into their own hands and were determined to make the twenty-first century, the century of Africa.

Speaking earlier in a similar vein the UN scribe, Mr. Kofi Annan said that NEPAD was, first and foremost, a partnership between African leaders and their peoples, and between States within Africa, adding that the NEPAD plan envisages a new partnership between Africa and the international community, especially the highly industrialized countries �- based on mutual respect and interdependence, as well as transparency and accountability, including peer review and performance monitoring among both African countries and international partners.

Also the Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Chr�tien, in his own speech said that G-8 leaders had identified much-needed resources that could aid Africa's development. and stressed that the time for talk had passed.

The Canadian leader recalled that immediately after the G-8 Summit held in Canada last June, his country had committed $6 billion for that purpose and he also disclosed that from 1 January, Canada would eliminate tariffs on goods from developing countries.

Obasanjo had submitted that with NEPAD , African leaders were addressing seriously the issues of poverty and underdevelopment on the continent. He said NEPAD was a holistic and integrated development initiative for the sustainable development of Africa, launched by the Organization of African Union �- now the African Union -� in 2001 and that since then there had been widespread international support for NEPAD.

Expalaining the various levels NEPAD functioned, Obasanjo said it operates on the global level, as the partnership was between the international community, including multilateral institutions, donor agencies and development partners.

In a similar fashion he said at the regional level, NEPAD was involved in framework cooperation between African States and regional institutions in joint ventures that would accelerate the process of integration. At the subregional level, NEPAD, he said would utilize the regional economic communities as building blocks for growth and economic development, while at the national level, there was a growing partnership between the public and non-government sectors.

Detailing the way forward for NEPAD, Obasanjo said that the first phase of the Plan of Action adopted at the inaugural summit of the African Union was a three-pronged strategy: first, it sought to create the conditions for sustainable development needed to enhance and strengthen effective States and regional cooperation; second, it identified priority sectors that could speed up African integration; and third, it identified the means of mobilizing both internal and external resources for the effective implementation of policies, programmes and projects.

"The development of an African Peer Review Mechanism marked a revolutionary innovation",Obasanjo said. That according to him is aimed at increasing the transparency and accountability of African governments.

The UN Secretary General , also declared that NEPAD would not be a success "if Africa failed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and the world as a whole could not achieve the MDGs unless they were achieved in Africa."

He listed two separate, but related, priorities -� combating HIV/AIDS and promoting girls� education -� as being particularly central to achieving the MDGs and realizing the promise NEPAD held for all of Africa.

Annan noted that t he implementation of NEPAD could benefit from two of the lessons learned by the United Nations and others involved in Africa�s development over the past decade.

First, he said was that peace and security were vital to development, stressing that e conomic programmes and projects devised by NEPAD must be combined with real progress towards ending conflicts and deepening the roots of peace.

Second, according to the UN scribe was that development cooperation required a new orientation as the international community must strengthen its support for the efforts made by African leaders.But Anan cautioned that "Africa�s future would be determined by Africans."

In his own speech at the meeting the South African president, Mr. Thabo Mbeki recalled that, at its inaugural meeting two months ago, the Africa Union had taken the decision to commend the New Partnership to the United Nations.

He listed the main goals of NEPAD as aiming to change the old paradigm that drove the approach to Africa�s development. NEPAD, according to Mbeki would also be the way forward for African people to attain the realization of Africa�s renaissance. The partnership would also result in a moving away from Africa�s donor relationship with the rest of the world. Finally, it would translate despair into hope.

He said Africa�s success would be a victory for all humanity because poverty was a problem for all humanity since he said what had hindered Africa�s development in the past was absence of resources to facilitate the realization of its development objectives.

In his own contribution, President John Agyekum Kufuor of Ghana exhorted his colleagues in African "to commit themselves to ensuring that the Peer Review Mechanism worked," stressing they would not be allowed to hide under the umbrella of solidarity or any other excuse when they failed to measure up to the principles underlying NEPAD. A transition period might be needed for some States to fully implement NEPAD's principles.