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Revisiting African Development Initiatives: From the Lagos Plan of Action (LPA) to the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD)

Marcellin Vidjennagni Zounmènou (PhD)*

Since the independence of African countries in the early sixties, development of the continent topped the agenda of political activities and programmes. It has become the experimental field where politicians, activists, development magicians and other gurus design and experiment their various remedies. The Lagos Plan of Action, adopted at the summit of the former Organisation of African Unity in 1980, was initially destined to provide Africa with what was termed an autocentric and self-reliant development. It intended to challenge the traditional and orthodox patterns, strategies and philosophies of development. This shift of African developmental paradigms bear no fruit as the LPA failed. In 1985, the African Recovery Priority Plan (ARPP) was designed and implemented, but it also failed and called for the intervention of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in the form of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) which produced mixed results. To date, the latest among the African development plans is the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). This paper argues that the multiplicity of plans with regard to the African development initiatives is a reflection of their inaccuracy when one takes into account the African political, social and cultural contexts. The paper concludes that for any development initiative to be successful, it needs to integrate the internal dynamics of the African communities; the development experts or people involved in the process also have to work within and with the communities, and not above them.

This paper explores the various development initiatives in Africa, from the Lagos Plan of Action (LPA) to the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). As such, the paper will address the following questions as the focal point of the discussion: With reference to the African development, why a multiplicity of plans? What are the weaknesses of such plans? Is there a paradigm shift in the African development initiative as far as the NEPAD is concerned? What should be the requirement for autocentric, self-reliant and African-led development plan?

The Lagos Plan of Action was adopted at the summit of the Organisation of the African Unity in 1980. It was initially designed to provide Africa with what is termed as autocentric development. This Plan intended to challenge some traditional and orthodox development patterns and strategies. It gave precedence to African internal dynamics at the expense of Western values. It intended to develop Africa by using an innovative approach. The Lagos Plan of Action (LPA) was said to be a self-reliant and self-sustaining development approach. This plan has thirteen chapters dealing with four main themes, namely priority sectors, human resources, institutions, and internal and external economic cooperation. Asante (1991) elaborates the four themes as follows:

While the first of these major points relates to the ‘development of priority sectors’, such as food and agriculture, the establishment of new industries, transport and communication, control and development of natural resources and energy. The second theme focuses attention on ‘skills training for participation’ in the areas of human resource development and deployment, the generation and utilization of science and technology and the training of women for their participation in development. The third theme relates to ‘priorities for institutional development’ in Africa. The major priority areas here include measures to (1) build up and strengthen economic co-operation as well as to create new institutions; (2) develop and strengthen trade and financial institutions; and lastly (3) strengthen development planning, collection of statistics and the integration of the population variable into the planning process. The fourth theme covers Africa’s extra-continental relations (SKB Asante 1991, 59).

Commenting on this plan, Samir Amin (1990) wrote:

The whole strength of the Lagos Plan lay in the fact that it was based on this masterfully simple idea that Africa’s development could not be merely a passive result of the world system’s or evolution of the European Economic Community, to which the continent’s states had been bound by association named after the agreements of Yaoundé and Lomé. The explicit option for a new, self-reliant development strategy arose from this crucial idea (Samir Amin 1990, 64).

The Plan stressed economic factors likely to promote the development of Africa. In theory it is said to be self-reliant, self-sustained and based on a participatory principle. The importance of the internal dynamics of the African communities in designing any development strategy is implicitly recognised. In theory, the experts of the Lagos Plan of Action alluded to the importance of African values in the perspective of African development. However, in practice, they have not explicitly formulated how they should be articulated in an overall development policy specifically designed for Africa. The importance of these values has been stressed in the final version of the Lagos Plan of Action. Therefore, the Plan is a development strategy whereby the internal dynamics of African communities and the values, which those communities cherish, are of equal importance as the economic factors.

The Plan seems to have many shortcomings. It speculated a lot about growth, agricultural development and industrialisation. It went further in relying excessively on international aid. The independence of the Plan is, therefore, to be questioned. The different countries involved did not give it the importance and the support it deserved and did not provide the means for its success. It did not either have the support of the North. However, the Lagos Plan of Action has the merit of alluding to the importance of the non-economic factors, such as African values, for African development. This should be one of the reasons why it did not gain the support of the West, and as a result, it obviously failed.

In 1985, the African Recovery Priority Plan (ARPP) was designed and implemented. But as it took the majority of the ideas and projects initiated by the Lagos Plan of Action (LPA), it also failed. Its failure should be attributed to the lack of decisiveness of the African leaders as well as to their lack of political will. The World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) came on board with the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP). The SAP did not advance the continent’s development. It instead worsened the economic situation, led Africa’s people to extreme poverty, suppressed education, jeopardised health policies, and propelled African countries into an unprecedented economic and human morass.

In the face of the uncertainties which characterise African development, African leaders came up with new alternatives under the banner of the African Renaissance: The Millennium Partnership for Africa’s Recovery Programme (of President Thabo Mbeki) and the Omega Plan designed by Abdoulaye Wade, the Senegalese President. On 11 July 2001, the Organisation of African Unity merged the two initiatives into the New Africa Initiative. On 23 October 2001, in Abuja (Nigeria), African Heads of State and the Implementation Committee agreed on the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). Thabo Mbeki (South Africa), Abdoulaye Wade (Sénégal), Abdel Aziz Bouteflika (Algeria) and Olusegun Obasanjo (Nigeria) were the main advocates of this plan. In the introduction to the plan, it is stated:

The new Partnership for Africa’s Development is a pledge by African leaders, based on a common vision and a firm and shared conviction, that they have a pressing duty to eradicate poverty and to place their countries, both individually and collectively, on a path of sustainable growth and development, and at the same time to participate actively in the world economy and body politic. The programme is anchored on the determination of Africans to extricate themselves and the continent from the malaise of underdevelopment and exclusion in a globalising world (www.nepad.com 2002, 3).

The NEPAD aims to:

Promote accelerated growth and sustainable development;

Eradicate widespread and severe poverty; and

Halt the marginalisation of Africa in the globalisation process.

Accordingly, the proponents of NEPAD expect:

Economic growth and development and increase in employment;

Reduction of poverty and inequity;

Diversification of productive activities, enhancement of international competitiveness and increased exports; and

Increase African integration.

In short, the NEPAD intends to reduce poverty among Africans and to create political, material, technological and human environments conducive to enhance the development of the continent. It listed good governance, democracy, growth, agricultural expansion, industrialisation and education as the paramount requirements for the development of Africa. Good governance, eradication of corruption, respect to the human rights, flow of foreign capital in the form of direct or indirect investments, access to technology, and quality of human resources are tools possible to help attain the goals set by the NEPAD. The NEPAD is said to be people-centred development, based on market-oriented economies. According to the authors, it “will be successful only if it is owned by the African peoples united in their diversity” (www.nepad.com 2002, 8). This means that such a Plan has to be designed in a participatory way. This idea is reinforced by the fact that, the authors of the Plan write: “The New Partnership for Africa’s Development is envisaged as a long term vision of African-owned and African-led development programme” (www.nepad.com 2002, 9).

To drive and achieve the above goals the Heads of State and the Implementation Committee set up five work teams responsible for:

Peace and Security (South Africa and the African Union);

Economic and Corporate Governance (United Nations Economic Commission for Africa- UNECA);

Infrastructure (Sénégal and the African Development Bank -ADB);

Agriculture and Market Access (African Union); and

Financial and Banking (Nigeria and the African Development Bank -ADB)¹.

Commenting on the NEPAD, Jonathan Opeinheimer said that the NEPAD is:

Modelled on the US Marshall Plan, targeting yearly investment of $ 64 billions to achieve a growth rate of 7% by 2015 to reverse Africa’s economic decline and arrest poverty. It is a simple bargain with the international community- in return for increased aid, investment, debt relief and improved trade access; African governments will commit themselves to good governance and the rule of law… This is where the African challenge lies, given that the continent has been associated with historical upheavals and insecurity stemming from political instability and far reaching corruption (Oppenheimer 2002, 4- 5)² .

The NEPAD should be commended for its objectives. Its strive for democracy and good governance is a major step in the political landscape of the continent. Its assessment of the developmental status of Africa is true, objective and realistic. However, the concept of good governance is challenged by the political practice of some African leaders. If its objectives are justified, yet the NEPAD presents many shortcomings. To begin with, it fails to consider why previous development projects (Lagos Plan of Action and the African Recovery Priority Plan) failed; and as a result, it drew no lessons which might have been useful for its success. Secondly, the NEPAD is not popular. It is as elitist as the African Renaissance, which gave birth to it. Thirdly, the modules and paradigms informing the NEPAD are neo-liberal. A rational analysis shows that the NEPAD is a nest of contradictions. In reality, on a closer look at it, one realises that it raises more questions than it answers. It also has many inconsistencies, contradictions and shortcomings. It confuses growth with development. Growth from an economic perspective is not development, but only an item of it. This mistake has been made in the previous development strategies applied to the continent and had the direct consequence of throwing millions of Africans into abject poverty.

The Plan is also said to be an African-owned and African-led programme, and market-oriented; yet it has never been submitted, neither to the grassroots in the form of a referendum, nor to the civil society likely to represent the interests of the African peoples. Its legitimacy stems only from the fact that their [African] citizens elected the presidents who are currently driving the NEPAD. The latter are currently touring the developed countries of the North seeking their blessings and the support for the Plan. In short, in theory the NEPAD is an African-owned Plan; but in practice it draws its legitimacy not from the African masses but from the North. African leaders prefer to account for their actions in Paris, Washington, London, etc. The contradiction is even more obvious when considering the fact that the NEPAD is claimed to be people-centred and market-oriented. The Neo-liberal economic policies and paradigms do not benefit the people, as they clash with communal values, ignore human beings, and create a huge gap between the rich and the poor.

The words of Jonathan Oppenheimer give the impression that the NEPAD is a requirement imposed on the African countries in order to qualify for aid from the developed nations. African countries have to exchange democracy, good governance and the rule of law for international aid, debt relief and other economic advantages. The bargain is simple: “We give you this if and only you respect these conditions.” Viewed from this angle, the NEPAD appears as a replica of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). It is also a patent expression of lack of confidence of the Africans in and among themselves. There is a reason for asserting this: Developed nations will only finance projects, which fit in their interests because the market tolerates no charity. There is also a risk of seeing the NEPAD rid of its substance, as was the case with the Lagos Plan of Action. Among the people appointed to represent the G8, there is Michel Campdessus, former Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and main architect of the Structural Adjustment Programme. The interest which the NEPAD raised in the North is suspicious. Moreover, like the African Renaissance, NEPAD is elitist. It ignored potential input from the grassroots. Indigenous knowledge and the values of the African traditions, which would have given this Plan its continental colour, are simply left out. There is no way that a Zulu, a Hausa, a Yoruba, a Goun or a Bambara can identify himself or herself with such a plan. Its participatory feature only exists in theory. The argument here is that the African people gave the mandate to their leaders to act on their behalf. Accordingly, every action taken by them bears the consent of the people they represent.

There is also the same absence of the use of African ethos, values, and indigenous knowledge system to design development. These paradigms are regarded as non-economic factors. The allusion to African identity is evasive: “Modern science recognises Africa as the cradle of humankind. As part of reconstructing the identity and self-confidence of the people of Africa, it is necessary that this contribution to human existence be understood and valued by Africans themselves” (www.nepad.com 2002, 5). The implication of such a statement is that, logically, African values have to be integrated with any practice of development concerning Africa. However, it is disappointing to read what is done with these paradigms:

Culture is an integral part of development on the continent. Consequently, it is essential to protect and effectively utilise indigenous knowledge that represents a major dimension of the continent’s culture, and to share this knowledge for the benefit of humankind. The New Partnership for Africa’s development will give special attention to the protection and nurturing of indigenous knowledge, which includes tradition-based literacy, artistic and scientific work, inventions, scientific discoveries, designs, marks, names and symbols, undisclosed information and all other tradition-based innovations and creations resulting from intellectual activity in the industrial, scientific, literary or artistic fields (www.nepad.com 2002, 19).

Such a statement calls for some remarks. There is no single allusion to the African values which have relevance to the shaping of the African personality (based on African Humanism) and consequently to the development of the continent. These values, which the authors of the NEPAD call “Indigenous Knowledge”, are also part of the Africa’s cultural endowment. Indigenous Knowledge System is part of culture. Culture embraces the whole life, and as such, it embodies the Indigenous Knowledge System, the art of governance, as well as the economy of the communities.

As far as they [African values] are concerned, literature, mainly in the oral genres, is confronted with conservation issues. To write it is to fix it. In this case, it is not fully used and the values that it carries will not be fully displayed. Oral genres are not a mere tool to entertain people, but they are people-centred consciousness and people-centred ideology, since they use languages which are accessible to the majority of the African peoples. They are dynamic and as such they do play political and developmental roles. They entertain, educate, support or subvert power. The educational role of oral literature is assimilated to the conscientisation process, which leads to social change. The latter is based on Humanism, which engages people to measure their actions within the community in the light of what is wrong and what is right, and to participate actively in decision-making. To label them is to transform them into empty shells.

The African traditions are dynamic. They evolve with the new challenges that the community faces. The best way to go would have been to identify the values they carry, how these values function in theory and practice, which form they take, which symbols they use, how they shape human resources and how they conceptualise development. It would also be useful to find out how they should be used in order to design a true African-owned and African-led policy of development without being rooted in a romantic contemplation of the past. Another way of proceeding would have been to assess them as to how they conceptualise development and what they say about it. They do not need only a conservationist and protectionist policy. They need an effective, realistic and efficient use.

The NEPAD is also caught in the trap of defining itself in terms of development. It does not innovate. It brought the neo-liberal conception of development to a continent whose historical, sociological and cultural environments are different from those of Europe and America. The NEPAD, which is the backbone of the African Renaissance, undervalues Africa for many reasons. It is silent about values that need to be developed for Africa’s people to develop their potential. I stated earlier that development starts with individuals. With regard to this assumption, the NEPAD should have asked the following questions: Who are the Africans? Where do they come form? Where and in what position are they? How did they get there and such a position? What are their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats? Finally, how can the answers to these questions help, using what Africans previously termed non-economic factors, to launch the development of the continent?

The NEPAD is just an application of neo-liberal economic policies to the African context. As result, it will lead the continent to sharp disparities: the poor will become the poorest while the rich will be the wealthiest. In such a predicament, the political class will remain the privileged class. The NEPAD appears as a set of principles and goals. It has no clear policy formulation as to how it will be implemented. There is no clear indication as to how good governance can be articulated, and how democracy, growth, and indgenous knowledge can be used in order to promote African development. For Aminata Traoré, for instance, “qu’ y a- t- il de nouveau et d’ africain dans un partenariat qui reconduit les mêmes réformes et les mêmes mots clés, et qui s’adresse aux mêmes interlocuteurs du Nord, dont la perception de l’Afrique, la conception de son present et de son futur n’ont pas change”³.

The Plan is not different from the previous development strategies that were designed and applied to the continent, and failed due to their persistence in ignoring the historical, sociological and cultural dynamics of African communities. It discards, and even disregards, the non-economic factors whose importance is thought to be invaluable for any development philosophy and strategy. It is nothing more than a revised Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). The only difference is that this Plan is designed by African leaders and will be implemented by them. After reading the NEPAD document one is left with the impression that it is nothing but rhetoric. In short, with the NEPAD, there is a gap between the African Renaissance discourse and the economic reality that it aims at achieving.

In conclusion, neither the Lagos Plan of Action nor the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) conceived Africa’s development as a holistic and endogenous process integrating social, economic, political and cultural factors. As the former head of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), Adebayo Adedeji, rightly observed:

African countries cannot continue to pursue economic policies and strategies as if all they want to be is poor imitations of America, France, England, USSR, or China; […] The time has come for us to think seriously about evolving a genuinely authentic strategy for development - a strategy for development that is not externally oriented, that is not based on copying other societies hook, line and sinker and that does not lead to acculturative modernization (SKB Asante 1991, 36)⁴.

Aminata Traoré, writer, activist and former Minister of Culture of Mali, shares the same opinion. She writes:

There is nothing more cumbersome, more alienating than the self-image and one’s place in the world, which live on the desires and discourses of others. Ransacked, marginalized, Africa is invited by the world masters to conceive herself in terms of poverty. Yet she is the only one to detain the remedies to her pains. More than capital, technologies, and foreign investors, she needs to rediscover a part of herself, which has been stolen: Her Humanity. (Quoted from. Traoré, A. 2002. Le viol de l’imaginaire. Paris: Actes du Sud/ Fayard, by Francis Kpatindé in Jeune Afrique 2002, 104, Translation by author).

This humanity is in fact African Humanism. It revolves around the values which I identified in the Goun and Zulu proverbs and tales, and encompasses the whole of African traditions. To sum up, there is a huge gap between the ideals of the African Renaissance and the NEPAD. To be precise the NEPAD seems to be incongruent to the African Renaissance. Because of the absence of positive African values in it, the NEPAD fails to be an African-owned and an African-led Plan. A development plan which integrates positive cultural paradigms empowers people. The opposite disempowers them; and the NEPAD, from this point of view, disempowers those it intends to serve, the reason being that development will still be an elitist process. As such, it will marginalise people and once again expose them to exploitation. They will be left on the periphery with regard to the whole process.

Once again, the NEPAD is nothing more than a replica of the traditional and orthodox development strategies previously implemented in African countries and failed lamentably as they contributed to Africa’s lack of development. As Alexander A. Kwapong put it: “Any effective economic and social development must be based upon a firm foundation of Africa’s cultural authenticity, distinctiveness and individuality. The modernization of Africa needs not be synonymous with its westernisation” (1992, 41). An education process, which leads people to combine traditional values and modern values, seems to be an efficient tool that has to be harnessed.

1 The above information is taken from the NEPAD website and from the article: Profiling NEPAD, in Southern African Regional Poverty Network Newsletter, No. 5, April 2002, PP 1-9.

2 Jonathan Oppenheimer in an interview with the Mining Weekly, 10- 16 May 2002. Page 4-5.

3 “What is new and African in a partnership which brings on board the same reforms, the same ideas, the same key words and which deals with the same interlocutors of the North? Their perception of Africa, their conception of its present and future have never changed” - interview with Francis Kpatindé, in Jeune Afrique, l’Intelligent, No. 2143, 4- 10 February 2002, page 13.

4 Adebayo Adedeji, ‘Development and Economic Growth in Africa to the Year 2000: Alternative, Projections and Policies’, in T. M. Shaw (ed.). Alternative Futures for Africa. Boulder and Colorado: Westview Press. P. 279.

Adedeji, A. 1998. Development and economic growth in Africa to the year 2000: Alternative, projections and policies’. In T. M. Shaw (ed.). 1998. Alternative futures for Africa. Boulder and Colorado: Westview Press.

Ami, S. 1990. Anatomy of maldevelopment. United Nations University: Zed Book.

Asante, SKB. 1991. African development: Adebayo’s alternative strategies. London, Melbourne, Munich, New York: Hans Zell Publishers.

Kwapong, A.A. 1992. The crisis of development: Education and identity. In Irele, A. (ed.). 1992. African education and identity. London, Melbourne, Munich and New York: Hans Zell Publishers.

Oppenheimer, J. 2002. Interview. In Mining Weekly, 10- 16 May.

Traoré, A. 2002. Le Viol de l’Imaginaire. Paris: Actes Sud/ Fayard.

____. 2002. Iinterview with Francis Kpatindé. In Jeune Afrique, l’Intelligent, No. 2143, 4- 10 February 2002, 13.

* School of Arts, Monash University, South Africa Campus, Tel: + 27 11 950 4185, Fax: +27 11 950 4088, Private bag X 60, Roodeport 1275, South Africa.

E-mail: Marcellin.zounmenou@arts.monash.edu

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