New Partnership For Africa,s Development: The African Paradigm

8/14/2019 New Partnership For Africa,s Development: The African Paradigm

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NEW PARTNERSHIP FOR AFRICASDEVELOPMENT:

The African Paradigm.

By

Alloy .S. Ihuah PhD*

Dept of Religion and Philosophy

Benue State University,

Makurdi.

Benue State,Nigeria.

E-mail: [email protected]

1. Abstract

A renowned Nigerian political philosopher, Professor Ogundowole (2005:142) onceargued that, Africas contribution to global GDP today is less than 2% and its

contributions to world trade has declined from 4% to less than 2% and it attracts less

than 1% of global capital flows. This is without prejudice to the fact that debt

repayment mechanism ensures more capital flight. Today, there is poverty in the land,

infrastructural breakdown, wars, insurgency, hunger, diseases and deaths far more in

number than it was under colonial rule. Although over thirty development strategies

have been attempted in the last 30 years alone to translate Africas abundant natural

resources into prosperity and deliver the continent from the throes of

underdevelopment, they have all recorded catastrophic failures.

This paper argues that, the broad assumptions of the New Partnership for Africas

Development are commendable though, the wider context of the imposition of

Predatorial behaviour of free market under the banner of neo-liberal orthodoxy runs

short of the important local content that can instigate Africas development. The

NEPAD like many continental initiatives is foreign in concept and practice, and so

lacks the capacity to engender a civilization of sustainable development in Africa.

2. The NEPAD Genesis.The advent of the NEPAD is rooted in the post cold war drama and the post Apartheidera in Africa. The post cold war experience ravaged African children and women andterrorized and dehumanized rural/civilian populations. Similarly, the post Apartheid era

in African politics instigated the widespread feeling of liberation, of alleviating povertyand promoting economic development. But more importantly, the expected benefitsfrom the much trumpeted peace dividend that was to be heralded by the collapse of theBerlin Wall and the dissolution of the United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) came tonothing. On the contrary, African nations harvested conflicts in large numbers.Adebayo Olukoshi (2004:11) adds to this that, more than this, the appetite of theinternational community for intervening to assist African countries with the resolutionof these conflicts seemed to have diminished considerably. It was obviously in the

face of the challenge of massive humanitarian emergencies accompanying the conflictsand the cynical display of selective indifference by the powers that were themselvesheavily implicated in the unfolding drama of violence engulfing the continent that

African leaders challenged themselves to take responsibility to tackle the economic,political, cultural and social problems of the continent. This is in addition to the decline


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in the foreign aid receipts flowing to the continent from some US$ 17.2 billion in 1990to US$ 12.3 billion in 2001(Olukoshi 2004:2). Africa as it were was no longer in doubtthat unless it adopts measures from within itself to develop its continent, nobody elsewould rise to the challenge. Perhaps the clear statement in the communiqu issued atthe end of the Denver, Colorado Summit of the Group of Seven (G7) countries became

a direct source of challenge to the African political and policy elite; to extricate itselfand the continent from the malaise of underdevelopment and exclusion in a globalizingworld.

This informed thinking was the tonic of Thabo Mbekis call for an African Renaissance

which stirred a considerable amount of discussion across the continent. Two initiativesresulted from this agitation. The first, known as the Millennium Partnership for theAfrican Recovery Programme (MAP) is associated with President Thabo Mbeki ofSouth Africa, President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and President AbdulazizBoutaflika of Algeria with Hosni Mubarak of Egypt joining later. The second initiativeknown as the Plan Omega was launched by Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal. These

initiatives were designed to tackle the problems of socio-economic development andpolitical stability on the continent. The two initiatives were later consolidated into theNew Africa initiative (NAI) as Africas strategy for achieving sustainable development

in the 21st century by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) Lusaka summit in July2001.On 23rd October, 2001, NAI was revised and adopted as the New Partnership forAfricas Development (NEPAD) in Abuja, Nigeria, as a collective African response to

the call for an African-driven effort to transform the fortunes of the continent for thebetter.

The NEPAD thus became the African equivalent of the Marshal plan that enabledEurope, with American financing, to recover speedily from the devastatingconsequences of the Second World War. Expectedly, explains why African leaders

declared while launching NEPAD that Africans have out of their volition, taken theirdestiny in their hands. That the continental initiative emphasizes that development is aparticipatory process involving the people, that development is about empowermentand self-reliance. And that Africans must be the architect of their development and, itssustenance has to rest on them and not the foreign benevolent guardians. The NEPADdocument thus emphasizes market access to the developed economies as a strategy forAfricas ability to achieve sustainable development, equitable trade, increase in capital

flows and debt write-offs. Articles 174-188 of the document state the objectives morecorrectly thus,

1. That Africans have to set up, own and manage development plans for Africas

renewal with a call from the international community to compliment theirefforts.

2. That the development plans must be based on national sub-regional and regionalpriorities and through participatory process involving the people

3. To develop the capacity to sustain growth and development thereby halting themarginalization of Africa in the globalization process

4. To promote the role of women in all activities; and

5. To enable the continent catch up with the rest of the world.

These set objectives, laudable though demands answers from the following questions:(i.) Is the NEPAD wholly African in concept and implementation? (ii) Can AfricaIndeed be de-entrapped from within the double-faced globalized world for sustainable


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growth and development through the instrumentalities of the NEPAD (iii) If, and whenthe NEPAD fails to engender sustainable growth and development in Africa to catch upwith the rest of the world, what paradigm(s) offer(s) itself/themselves as alternative(s)to Africas human sustainable development?

3. African Origin of the NEPAD?It is the convinced conclusion of students of African development that no socio-economic transformation of the continent will ever be possible without the determinedeffort by Africans themselves to sort out the domestic political dysfunctionalties facingthe continent. The articulated view point of African leaders in the NEPAD document ofimplementation is therefore is a commendable effort. On cross examination of theNEPAD philosophy, priorities and implementation modalities, (African Peer ReviewMechanism (APRM), one is not left in doubt that some of the high hopes generated bythe NEPAD document have being seriously undermined by the essentially neo liberalistpitch of its economic blue print, and the limited scope of its political agenda. This isbecause the theoretical framework of the NEPAD philosophy is cast in the kinds of

governance managerialism that has become the hallmark of neo-liberalist politicaleconomy. The designers of the new development agenda and the basis of the neededpartnership rely on monetarist theories, commanding the relentless pursuit of profit atwhatever cost. Studies carried out reveal that Africa required about US $ 64 billion tobe sourced annually through Direct Foreign Investment (DFI) to achieve 7% growth.(Gambari 2000:5) This itself signals that Africa is not only entrapped by foreignfinancial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank(WB), and the World Trade Organisation (WTO), but that the new initiative itself is notwholly African.

The argued fact here is that, a countrys economic infrastructure that is premised ondomestic resources and which ensures that its entrepreneurs have access to requisite

factors of production is more likely to engender a powerful motor of development.Unarguably, Africas partners and foreign benevolent benefactors like the IMF, the

WB, WTO etc virtually preach the opposite to African government. The very fact of theopening statement of Article 174 of the NEPAD document that Africans have set up,

own and manage development plans for Africas renewal with a call from theinternational community to compliment their effort is itself as defeatist and inauthentic

living as it is eurocentric in conception and implementation.

Expectedly, the first port of call by African Leaders to sell the NEPAD to Europe wasGenoa, Italy where the G8 summit was taking place. The NEPAD is one most recentattempts at Africans de-entrapment designed for the backward countries within the

world capitalist (market) economic system which guarantees the sustenance ofeconomic growth of industrially advanced parts of the system though, holds down thegrowth of its backward parts. Throughout the 1980s and in the early 1990s, AfricanLeaders have paraded a number of so-called home initiatives to address all dimensionsof the multifaceted developmental challenges confronting the continent though withcatastrophic failures.

The Lagos plan of Action for the Economic Development of Africa, 1980-2000 and theFinal Act of Lagos 1990; Africas Priority Programme for Economic Recovery(APPER) 1986-1990, The African Alternative Frame work to Structurer AdjustmentProgramme for Socio-Economic Recovery and Transformation (AAF-SAP), 1989; The

African Charter for Popular Participation for Development; and The Compact forAfrican Recovery, 2000 are a few of the many foreign induced developmental


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Strategies aimed at easing out the advanced Countries who have been locked in a zero-sum game. Ogundowole (2004:163) explains this Scenario better thus

the advanced countries appropriate the major part of the latters incomesthrough transnational corporations and by shackling credit terms, thus have

enslaved the backward people in a web of technological and food

dependence and erected obstacles to manufacture exports from thebackward countries to their advanced countries own home markets; pass

unto the backward countries the cost of all economic crises; rampant

inflation and currency instability in the advanced countries

This notably explains the wave of economic, political and social crisis visibly ravagingevery part of Africa. The question of origin, ownership and possession of the NAPADis contentious. That a few African leaders paraded the idea, consolidated andpopularized it on the continent does not and cannot translate to ownership. And eventhat Africans originated the idea does not and cannot translate into actual possession ofthe NEPAD, just as possessing the idea does not and indeed cannot mean Africanownership of the NEPAD. It is a known fact that the process leading up to the adoptionof the NEPAD document mainly involved only a small group of African Leaders whothemselves are presiding over failed states, and their equally small circle of adviserswho are at best political jobbers and contractors. By comparative analysis the NEPADcan be said to be a bastard child of globalization; less African in origin, ownership andpossession than the Lagos plan of Action, for example. As Olukoshi (2004:18) arguesin support,

the document and its promoters seem to content themselves with the rhetoric of

ownership as though its mere assertion is tantamount to its actual realization

and practice. It is also not to take into account the challenges of grounding

policy into domestic policy and political process so that all claims to African

ownership can stand to critical and regorous scrutiny.What the NEPAD is not is that, it is not an African Initiative and it has no Africanagenda. The NEPADs wholesale embrace of the kinds of orthodox, narrowly focused

market economic policy framework that underpinned the adjustment programmespursued by the Bretton Wood institutions across Africa during the 1980s and 1990sserves as the case in point. These programmes have been carried over into the 21stcentury through the poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs) that African Countrieshave been encouraged one after the other to adopt in order to qualify for bilateral andmultilateral aid (Olukoshi P.19). The decisive suspension of Zimbabwe from thecommonwealth by African leaders as a precondition for funding NEPAD by the UnitedStates of America (U.S.A), and some members of the European parliament more thananything demythologizes the ownership theory. This is aside from the ocular fact thatmany of the areas that the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), an organ of theNEPAD adopted in 2002 to foster adoption of policies, standards and practices that leadto political stability, high economic growth, sustainable development and acceleratedsub regional and continental integration are fairly covered by the WB, IMF and WTO.While the APRM emphasizes the deployment of African expertise in the Peer reviewprocess (Paragraph 11, APRM Base Document 2001) it also acknowledges that theremay be instances where the services of non-African experts, individuals or institutionsor organizations will be used. It argues on this score that the NEPAD initiative isframed and interpreted in the neo liberal manner which implementation cripples and

destroys the post-colonial African State institutions which had been weak before. Theessentially neo liberal frame work that informs the economic principles and direction as


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spelt out in the NEPAD document represents a set back in the African quest for returnto the Path of sustained economic growth and development. Africas development isnot through debt reduction as advanced in the NEPAD document. It is not so much themarginalization of Africa from globalization as proudly agitated in the NEPADmanifesto. Such are mere cosmetic palliatives. The failure of the World Bank and other

foreign investors to deliver growth and development to developing countries should callfor more serious structural, far reaching beneficial policies. Africa like every other partof the world need assistance and collaborative efforts for growth and development, butsuch aid should be granted not on the basis of imposition of naked predetorialbehaviour of free market under the banner of neolibeal orthodoxy,

4. Africas Development And The Challenge Of GlobalizationBy 2005 all 189 UN member states have pledged to

Develop further an open trading and financial system that is rule based,predictable and nondiscriminatory. This includes a commitment to good

governance development and poverty reduction-nationally and internationally

Address the least developed Countries special needs. This includes tariff andquota-free access to their exports; enhanced debt relief for heavily indebted

poor Countries; cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous

official Development assistance for Countries Committed to poverty reduction.

Address the special need of land-locked and small island developing states. Deal comprehensively with developing countries debt problems through

national and international measures to make debt sustainable in the long term.

In co-operation with the developing countries, develop decent and productivework for youth.

In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies provide access to affordableessential drugs in developing Countries.

In cooperation with Private sector, make available the benefits of newtechnologies-especially information and communications technologies.

The quip above captures correctly that the present state of the world economy is not justinterdependent but more so integrated. With integration, the wold has become one bigstate. Interdependence on the other hand is the mere mutualism of states. Thisobviously explains the contraptions of the NEPAD as Africas Marshall plan in

anticipation of foreign assistance for authentic liberation from economic slavery and

bad leadership. Sadly though, Africas benefactors and partners are wont toacknowledge Africas contribution to world civilization and constructive engagement

with the rest of the world though, they are unwilling to lose the blinkers of theprejudices of their forefathers.

Development itself is the desire and ability to use what is available to continuouslyimprove the quality of life, liberate people from the hazardous power and influence ofnatural, geophysical, socio-historical, and world environment. This ability is a thingthat cannot be borrowed, or received as a gift from others in a ready-made form. It hasto be evolved through a process of interaction with the environment. In the very wordsof Julius Nyerere, (1973:5) the person must develop himself. It is self-liberation, it is

self-realization. Hence, self-reliance through intersubjectivity.


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This concept of development entails a conscious attempt to advance the African qualityof life from the within. Ogundowole (2004:93) puts it analogously thus, developmentis like ambition. It cannot be received by people from another people and the

characteristic feature it assumes are necessarily the product of selfawareness, self-motivation and self-drive of the people, the agent of such ambition. It is not, and

cannot be a state in which Africa has access to finished goods of advanced foreigncountries.

It remains to be proved whether the assumptions of the NEPAD fulfills thesecharacteristics features. The NEPAD sets out to develop a socio-economic and politicalenvironment conducive for economic growth and sustainable development though, thismandate has inadvertently advanced the neo-liberal philosophies of the Bretton Woodinstitutions, which are supported, with the new order of internationalization ofeconomic activities to globalization of national cultures and politics, environment andsecurity issues. So used, globalization is a metaphor for the aspiration anddetermination to render idea or way of life applicable and functional throughout the

world.Globalization in its neo liberal vision leads to undermining the national civilizationalidentity of millions of Africans, formation of the vacuum of values and senses in theirconsciousness, and as a result cultural marginalization of their society, increase incrimes and drug addiction. Globalization encourages free market and open society, asadvanced in the Millennium Development Goals though, it suffices to ask how Africa issquared in this equation. Economically, many African countries have taken theirrightful places in the world system as troubled and peripheralized enclave economies

with its middle class and low-income groups devoured. In Nigeria, as elsewhere inAfrica, there is a rat race for fraudulent acquisition of public corporations andgovernment houses. Expectedly, Africa is implementing to the letter the dictates of the

borrower countries and organizations whose only language of interaction is money andgreed economics. The dogma here is that, profitability, or the insatiable urge to makemore and even more money at whatever cost is the apotheosis of money as an end initself. In this sense, the invention of money is the original sin of economics. Thus, theurge to obey the commandment of this dogma as the only way out for humanity is tosay the least nihilistic.

Rather than benefit all Africans, globalization has promoted a culture of mass poverty;instead of sharing the benefits of uncountable wealth for the suffering and hungryAfricans, and ensuring that material welfare, spiritual upsurge, health and access toeducation for the teaming African population, globalization is spreading weapons of

mass destruction and perfecting ways of promoting and protecting the interest of theminority supper-rich nations and international organization as against the absolutemajority of the mankind who populate the African continent. Thabo Mbekis voice is a

summarizer: the phenomenon of globalization occupies pride of place in todays

international dialogue. The all round integration of the global community is proceedingat great pace. This encompasses our continent but not necessarily as equal partners in,or beneficiaries of this process (Ntuli 2004:173)

Today, our open society is suffering degradation of the environment and devaluation ofthe human person. The new stage of techno-scientific civilization has mutated theAfrican and made him/her a standing reserve to serve the interest of the west. Whereas

in their old form the negative forces of globalization engendered the World War I, thenNazism and the World War II, the forces of techno-scientific economy with its


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character of world-wide armed conflict today may become nothing but mankindssuicide. The US.A. today makes the rules and maintains the institutions that shape theinternational political economy. Economically, the U.S is the worlds most important

country; militarily, it is not just the most important country, it is the decisive one. Thesetwo of the most important tools of oiling the global system that is controlled by the

countries of the Northern hemisphere informs Thomas Friedmans blunt statement that:the world is sustained by the presence of American Power and Americas willingness to

use that power against those who would threaten the system of globalization Thehidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist (1999:373).

It is thus understandable to reason that the NEPAD which implementation philosophiesare grounded in the hidden hand of the market forces of the west does not have thecapacity to instigate and sustain Africas development. Ramose (2002:143) offers a

ready support here that, even the blind can see that the largest majority of humanity

lives by the side of and not through a globalizing economy as popularized in theNEPAD initiative. Growth and development is achieved when the great majority of

citizens of a given nation, regardless of its status or background, has been allowed tofreely participate in the development process of that nation. This realization calls forthe transformation of the present global system, to conduct the African back into hishumanistic heritage, into something more stable and humane, based on thecivilizational values that are common to all mankind. These concern the essentialvalues of inter-subjectivity. It is what Ogundowole (2004:183) calls self-reliancismwhich offers a short-cut to advancement and progress. Development does not ensuethrough dependence on foreign capital investment. In itself, foreign capital investmentis diversionary. It stultifies development efforts and renders a people ineffective andwithout control of the substance as well as the pace of their development. Moreover,FDI has a negative effect on domestic savings. Its gives room for the recipient country

to increase its consumption. Although FDI brings capital, it also leads to immense outflow of profit and other investment income. Alozie (2005:75) concores on this pointthat too rapid build-up of FDI could lead to denationalization where the foreign shareof the nations wealth stock increases relative to the local share. This is aside from the

obvious problem of balance of payment that follows the exhaustion of privatizationlinked FDI and continued increase of remittances of profits abroad.

It goes to argue therefore that the demand implicit in the NEPAD that African countriesmust be globalization compliant is smack of Uteen Kpev Sha Gondu we i.e dubiosity.Globalization itself is no respecter of nations. Its originators and major beneficiariesthemselves often fall victim. The percentage that enjoy globalization in any of theindustrially developed Countries are usually less than forty percent of the population.William Greider (1992) testifies that the economic consequences of globalizationproduction have already been experienced by the million of the U.S.A industrialworkers. In Nigeria, the global economic system has tsunamised a reasonablepopulation and has kept our aged civil servants permanently in a State of suspendedanimation as their pension entitlement and or severance allowances pile up for monthand years unpaid. This is aside from the very angry fact that less than 40% of Nigerias

capital budgets since 1999 has been implemented. (Daily Independent Nov.7, 2005:1-2). Thus, the foreign economic prescriptions have brought about total annihilation andthe near total lack of the capacity of the masses to revolt.

Nothing is farther from the truth than to argue that the NEPAD agenda is to say the

least a wholesale pauperization of majority of African generations. On the streets ofAfrican cities today are poverty stricken individuals who are apparently disenchanted


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with life in the environmentally abused set-ups. Human development as it were revertsto its opposite of the human underdevelopment with many African Countries beingscored very low on the index of human development. Moeletsi Mbeki (2004:35) sadlyreports that while china had lifted 400,000 people out of poverty in the past 20 years,

Nigeria had pushed 71 million people below the poverty line. It is no surprise then that

Nigeria is ranked 151 out of 177 Countries amongst the poorest in the world in terms ofhuman development. In Africa, famine pervades the population, health services areterribly poor and inadequate and the mortality rate remains high. 340 million Africansor half of the population live on less than U$ 1 per day and only 58% of the populationgave access to safe drinking water.

Obviously, the capacity to impact positively in the improvement of human welfare,which qualifies as development, does not lie in foreign aid. It lies with the Africansthemselves, and they must not remain passive in the cause of saving themselves.However, the problems of leadership deter sustainable development in Africa; ademocratic, people oriented, visionary leader in the sense of what direction to follow

and what goals to seek as well as the capacity to inspire and mobilize citizens fordevelopment. Most African leaders suffer from legitimacy problem and so arepsychologically incapacitated to effect changes in the global economic framework infevour of domestic growth and development.

Sustainable development in Africa cannot ensue by mere screaming and raving abouteconomic and social marginalization as typified in the NEPAD document ofimplementation. The future of the advancement of Africa lies in upholding the principleof self-reliance. The evolution of an indigenous economic and development agenda thatexpresses the aspirations of the African is more likely to engender human sustainabledevelopment. Thus argued, indigenous knowledge systems presents itself as the bestpolicy framework with respect to the forces of liberation and globalization for poorer

African Countries. It is not to seek rapid and close integration but rather to re-negotiateselective modalities of integration or what is commonly called strategic integration

which encapsulates a philosophy of human integration; a philosophy which task is tolop off the reactionary tendencies of the so-called African leaders. This philosophyseeks a wholistic development that is far beyond the prism of our leaders who are eurocentric in thought and practice and who have fast become learned salesmen of theeconomic reforms of the IMF, the WB and the WTO that have long enslaved Africa. Itis argued here that, de-entrapping Africa from the international subjugationist spidersweb can only be done from the within; through African indigenous knowledge systems(AIKS). Even the so-called humanitarian aid flowing from the western democracies isstill subject o the egoistic calculus of profit making.

5. Towards a Development Paradigm for AfricaThe world, we are always told, is a global village. This clich entails that we are moremutually dependent on each other than ever before. We are further made to know thatours is the Age of information, and the age of knowledge of science and technology. Intodays world too, information, knowledge and science and technology connotes power

and tools that engender development. The question of relevant importance here is theAfrican contribution. In this enterprise, Asia faced this problem squarely and profitedfrom it by subjecting western technology and knowledge to the Asian spirit. Inparticular, the Japanese harnessed their indigenous knowledge systems to developthemselves. It is argued here that Africans can do the same by developing a relevant

and appropriate technology that will pursue a wholistic agenda away from the mereeconometric deterministic paradigm.


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Agreed, globalization connects people, ideas and goods. It is generally understood asa panacea for all our ills. So understood, there are those who view it as a new

economic system with the power to redistribute income and wealth in a more equitablebasis, capable of solving alarming industrial, labour and unemployment problems. Butof course this assertion is not true even in Europe and America. In Africa, the situation

is worse. Our Universities and other institutions of learning produce unemployablegraduates because our system is irrelevant to our needs.

Others view globalization as new moral, social, political and legal codes stabilizingdiplomatic relations promoting the spread of democracy or drastically reducing theproduction of arms and nuclear weapons (Schafer 2000:125). Yet there are those whoview it as a new information or communication system, one capable of dealing with theshift from verbal to visual literacy, phenomenal accumulations of data, globalnetworking, internets, the computer revolution, electronic highways, cyberspace andmind-boggling changes in communication (ibid). Similarly, globalization is seen as anew environmental system, with the capability to conserve resources, control pollution,

protect the biosphere, and radically alter attitudes and practices with respect to thenatural environment and other species.

These assumptions are reflected in the NEPAD document with the believe that the onlyway Africa can achieve growth and development at the speed that its people want is bytrapping into the global stock and bond markets, by seeking out multinationals to investin the continent and by selling into the global trading system what its factories produce.It suffices to ask; where does Africa with its technological backwardness and its statusas a dumping ground for Europes nuclear waste fit into this equation? What of theeconomic regimes of the IMF, the WB and the WTO? How can the robber equitablyredistribute income and wealth? How can a system that Mechanizes everything andadvocates learner, meaner quotas create employment? We argue though that

interdependence is a necessary ingredience of development, it is only one aspect ofanother most important part (i.e African indigenous knowledge systems) of a wholewhich cultural philosophy is here argued as a development paradigm that should trulyguide the NEPAD Vision. AIKS stresses instead the essential interrelations andinterdependence of all phenomena- biological, physical, psychological, social andcultural. Ntuli (2004:175) adds his voice more correctly in this regard that,

Indigenous cosmology centers on the co-evolution of the spiritual, natural,

and human words. Thus many indigenous peoples in Africa still practice the

ritual of burying their umbilical cords and immediately planting trees at the

same spot in order to establish a relationship with the plant life. IKS holds

that there are sacred places that have to be avoided and must be conserved.

There are places where people are not permitted to fell trees, hunt wild life

or to collect wild fruits for commercial purposes. Natural phenomenon like

rivers and mountains play a significant role in the psyche and constitution of

our people

This cultural philosophy entails a functional attitude of the collective knowledgeand spirit of Africa, to trace its own footprint so as not to walk in the shadow of other

peoples progress, but to forge its own way into the future over which it alone can claim

reasonable measure of control and self-determination. Africa can only act African andfrom within its traditional African politics to engender a people centred development. Itmeans then that the question of identity is critical to the implementation of the

NEPAD ideals, the absence of which makes the NEPAD a foreign body in the Africanbody system. AIKS is central to everything we do and think. It is what we do and


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reason why we do it, what we wish and why we imagine it, what we perceive and howwe express it, how we live and in what manner we approach death. It is ourenvironment and patterns of our adoption to it. It is the world we have created and arestill creating; it is the way we see that world and the motives that urge us to change it. Itis the way we know each other and ourselves; it is our web of personal relationship, it is

the images and abstractions that allow us to live together in communities and nations. Itis the element in which we live; it is the totality of our cultural values.

Under the NEPAD initiative, the capacity for growth and development is essentiallylacking. This is because the primary elements for Africas sustainable development i.ecultural values have been eroded by rampaging colonizers, and who have also effecteda total domination of a subjected nation. In our post modern world under the banner ofglobalization, multi-National Corporation; the WB, WTO, IMF etc have achievedeffective global governance by virtue of their control of economic power, financialmarket, of the new global trade bureaucracy, of media, and increasingly of education.The WTO has placed for example all governments in the world in a virtual hostage

situation; it has the virtual power of Vito over member nations laws if their laws are inconflict with the provisions of the organization. The implications of this on Africas

development are varied; total underdevelopment of African nations, poverty, diseases,insecurity, corruption, political violence, and rapid spread of HIV/AIDS among others.

Acting from without the African continent conducts Africa and its population outwardaway from growth and development, and self-determination. To act in a way that theeffect of our action will be compatible with the permanence of an authentically humanlife on earth is to act in ways that are relevant to Africans and their needs; it is to actwithin the cultural values of the African, to be guided by AIKS. This much is whatAfricans have in their indigenous educational system. An educational system that is notonly relevant to Africans and their needs, but one that is linked to social life, both

materially and spiritually. This epistemic system is collective in nature, it is poly-dimensional, it is sustainable and in conformity with the successive stages of physical,emotional and mental development of its recipients. It places emphasis on thedevelopment of wholistic or well-rounded personalities to fit that society. This form ofeducation contrasts with the western form of education that is designed to produce

workers sound in learning and skills, indispensable to modern bureaucratic and globaleconomy, and not character formation, which was the priority of priorities of Africantraditional education (Ayandele,1998:178).

Unlike the atomistic mind set of Europe and America, AIKS promotes a syntheticintellectual culture which task is to discriminate in fevour of relevant needs as against

exaggerated materialism of the West. AIKS guides the African mind to produce butonly such goods and services their society and economy needs. As for the Westerneducation, Ayandele (ibid) speaks of

mentally enslaving exotic formal education yielding young men and

women eternally banished to the cultural and physical limbo: a public

health system that diagnoses diseases rather than deliver a cure ; an

economy which internally does not deliver bread to the greater part of

the present, but externally has already mortgaged the welfare of the

future generations; a morally void and spiritual bankrupt society in

which the brawn browbeats the brain, belting the latter with filthy lucre;

an uncontrollable social engineering process determined by the so called elite who, far from promoting societal harmony and cohesion,


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had undermined traditional moral and social values, without an effective

replacement.

In Africa, and for Africans, knowledge must necessarily be combined with wisdom andMetaphysics to engender growth and development. Tiv wisdom literature reflects thisdevelopment paradigm as Mzehemen i.e. progressive or positive upward upliftment ofthe masses through the necessary conditions of bughshe (wisdom), Mfe (knowledge)and Mkav (understanding). The NEPAD may be a home grown initiative to surmountthe age long obstacles to African development. However it has disconnected itselffrom Africa by adhering to the unstated conditionalities of the Bretton Woodinstitutions. Moreover, the NEPAD initiative has distanced itself from Africans byimplementing the neo liberal economic agenda of the multinational corporations.Claude Ake (1981:74) succinctly corroborates this view when he says,

western capital encourages the propaganda of the ideology of

development and gives some aid to ensure a barely credible

performance, as well as the persistence of existing exploitative ties

between African economies and Western economies.

Partnership between Africa and the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized countries is atbest founded on greed economics which itself does not change the social well-being orreal life of a people in a positive upward direction. What needs to be done is aconscious effort at transforming the present global system into something more stableand humane based on the civilizational values of the Africans. This epistemic approachenables Africa to pull itself out of the cycle of poverty, instability, insecurity andinternecine strife.

Globalization must here be redefined as a genuine and mutually beneficial imperativethat creates a capacity or possibility for each nation, continent or region of the world to

seek its own selfdetermination and elevation without whatever conditionalities fromthe without, and thereby have the power to make its invaluable contributions to thedevelopment of its own people. Here understood, AIKS could be diverted to serve asthe cardinal source of global financial and material empowerment to improve thequality of human life of the African population. Africa truly need to define, promoteand export some of its valuable socio cultural beliefs, institutions and materials, i.e.communalism, clothes, food, artifacts, traditional medical practices and democraticculture, agricultural and engineering practices on their own terms to other parts of theworld. This when done, will create resources and improve human welfare and thusqualify as sustainable human development which here means a balance of quantity withquality.

Unlike an instrument of dichotomization and imperialism (visibly captured in theNEPAD initiative) which promotes the culture, values, science, art and ideologies ofthe dominant cultures or nations, AIKS engenders a development paradigm that entailsan ongoing commitment to advance from the less human conditions of disease, hatred,crime, war, ethnicity, poverty, oppression, injustice, corruption, faithlessness, etc, to themore human conditions of health, love, peaceful co existence, equity, justice,community fellow feeling, faith and hope etc. This means a genuine comprehensivemobilization of all available indigenous resources: naturalmaterial, humanmaterial(physical) and human spiritual (mental) in the development of the human person.Africas development constructed in the NEPAD document of implemental emphasizes

the physical aspects to the exclusion of the soul, the spirit of Africa. It exaggeratesmaterialism and consumerism thus leaving ugliness and destruction in the land,


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corruption and poverty, diseases and death, misrule and political violence everywhereon the African continent.

Obviously, the question of good governance, democracy and human rights as well aspoverty alleviation and fight against corruption which form the major planks of theNEPAD are largely unattended to in practice. African leaders seem to share amembership of cryptic club in which there is little inclination to castigate but gratertendency to empathize with members. While President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeriakills and maims in Odi in Rivers State, Zaki-Biam and Gbeji in Benue State, Nigeria,his peers hail and acknowledge his people oriented programmes of good governance.

And while Nigeria under its president Obasanjo act as a peer reviewer of its neigbours

governance policies, its presides over a dysfunctional, failed state. While RobertMugabe of Zimbabwe violently dismantles a state that was, until recently, functional,his peers applaud. It goes to argue thus that, the NEPAD suffers credibility problembecause it is neither independent nor indigenous.

It suffices to argue here that AIKS is the tonic that the NEPAD surely need to engender

a civilization of sustainable development on the African continent. The NEPAD idealsof good governance, constitutional democracy human rights, poverty alleviation andanti corruption are most assured and sustained by the traditional African principles ofoneness, consensus, openness and humility as well as traditional African constitutionalthought and democratic tradition. Unlike the western tradition of democracy in whichcouncil the NEPAD seats, African democratic political culture is grounded on thephilosophy ofTor veren yor na ga, that is, a king without the people is neither a symbolor reality of kingship. In Africa, to be a king is to accede to that position because of theconsent of the people and to remain so for as long as the people have not withdrawntheir consent. As a continent in want of de-entrapment and liberation of the indigenousconquered people of Africa, its leaders must rise to the challenge of responsible and

accountable leadership in the tradition of our ancestors for our continent today is toodangerous for silence. Africas best resources; human, material and spiritual, must not

be used to nourish other nations while it continues to dry up and wither by the day.African jurisprudence represents a far superior way of linking law and society as it isbased on restorative justice. It incorporates a philosophy that caters adequately for thereabsorbtion of the offender into the traditional African society after the punishment.Tiv wisdom literature reflects this Philosophy thus, wan ka una nyia-u ambi sha namkpa u gberku u te kela ga. Meaning, One does not amputate ones leg because his/her

child defecates on it. Understood as such, the human person for whom development hasmeaning desires being more in the same manner that he desires having more .

It is argued here that harnessing African knowledge systems for sustainable humandevelopment represents a far more better option for Africas overall development.

Ntulis (2004:72) clear-eyed analysis of the deficiencies uncovered in modern fisheryscience and other disciplines calls for a wholesale adoption of AIKS as a paradigm forAfricas renewal and de-entapment from the whims of foreign TransnationalCorporations and Financial Institutions. Traditional fisheries for example can contributecontemporary knowledge to development and management planners as follows:-

i. Traditional Management Methods: Often ensure equitable access andmanagement measures that include limited entry, seasonal, spatial, gear, size orspecies restriction; appropriation rights; and the concept of community based

sole ownership.


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ii. Conservation: includes measures such as the widespread use of closed seasonsand areas and harvestable size limitations.

iii. Stock Assessment: Local knowledge often provide a useful basis forunderstanding local fish stocks and their population dynamics (especially aboutthe timing, location and behaviour of spawning aggregations of reef and lagoonfishes).

iv. Environmental Impact Assessment: Local knowledge of spawning migrationsand aggregations sites indicate the likely impact of coaster engineering projects

v. Local Hydrography: Local knowledge is often rich in information on waterqualities and physical behaviour.

vi. Mapping: Local knowledge of living coaster resources also include intimatespatial familiarity with the physical environment, including local currents, sea-bed conditions and other such phenomena.

vii. Fishing Methods and Technologies: The indigenous knowledge expressed infishing methods and technologies affords an alternative to high technologydevelopment approaches. Furthermore, the knowledge of fish behaviour onwhich traditional methods of fishing are predicated can be adopted to moderntechnology.

viii. Fish Systematics and Biology: Local fish names and the taxonomies they implyas well as empirical knowledge behaviour often embodies in local nomenclaturecan be of immense practical usage.

It goes to argue that these knowledges are based on long term empirical localobservation. They are practical and behaviour oriented, focusing on important resourcetypes and species. More importantly, these indigenous knowledge systems like otherindigenous knowledge types involve the balance of short term thinking and immediategratifications with long term thinking for future generations. It shifts the balancetowards improving the quality of human life on earth. African knowledge systemsacknowledge a symbiotic relationship between humanity and other members of thebiotic community; the animals, land and plants. This to us is what counts as sustainabledevelopment. Development does not ensue in the neo-liberal culture of consumerism,pollution and resource depletion as popularized by the internationalization of economicsystems and globalization of cultures. The logic of contemporaneous inclusion andexclusion paraded in the bounded reasoning of globalization has created dangerousboundaries rather than demolish existing ones. It has few takers but marginalized and

pauperised many thus conducting humanity outward away from its essence on earth.This may have instigated the informed conclusion of an author;

There is no original state to return to, it has moved. The most

pragmatic way is to search for a third space of articulation. With new

configurations and new identities based on the old. Bica (1998)

Africa, it must be said is in urgent want of new configurations and new identitiesthough, as the quip above asserts, such new configuration and new identities must bebased on the old. The NEPAD approach in addressing both political and governanceproblems i.e. poverty alleviation, corruption security and environmental issues amongothers does not promise any desirable positive achievement. Attempted solutions at

Africas chronic developmental problems cannot be made from the without. ThatAfrica suffers from numerous problems i.e. moral bankruptcy, economic slavery,


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political parochialism and religious bigotry is no longer news. What is news is that,solutions to Africas problems cannot be crafted by foreign benevolent guardians in the

name of partners. Africas development is necessarily connected to the idea of African

renaissance, to reclaim its identity, to struggle and strive to define, engage and alsorespond to social challenges that are relevant to the African peoples in body and soul.

The inspiring voice of Chinweizu most cryptically captures this idea; that Africansocieties be reorganized on eco-viable ethical principles, abandoning the modernEuropean mania for organizing society on principles that serve avarice. In his words:

We must reconstruct our societies, not for the relentless pursuit of

profit beyond even the dream of avarice, but rather for the pursuit of

contentment and social peace and happiness to create new African

societies whose overriding value is eco-moral uprightness, not the

socially and economically destructive accumulation of private wealth

(Chinweizu, 1988:7).

What this entails is that the evolution of a development paradigm that fails to take into

major consideration the religio-cultural milieu of the Africans is bound to beineffectual. This itself calls for the rebirth of an African development State which isalso by definition democratic and whose economic foundations are built on policyheterodoxy and domestic political consensus Unarguably, this broad political andpolicy framework has the capacity to assure sustained development on the continent. Italso has the greater possibility of ensuring that partnership, (if any), between Africa andthe rest of the world takes as its starting and end points the aspirations of the citizenryas opposed to an uncritical, even opportunistic pandering to an external donorcommunity that is as cynical as it is self-serving.

Africa has the capacity for self-sustainability. It is one of the main regions which make

up about 65% of the earth land area the world resources; it has a proven natural gasreserve of 8,222 billion standard cubic metres as at the end of 1989; a figure well aheadof North America, Latin America and Western Europe with 7,578;7184;5,459 billionstandard cubic metres respectively (Maciois, 1991) There exist other recourses such asgold, silver, bauxite, iron-ore, uranium, Tin, Silica and Copper among others. Added tothe above, Africa is blessed with one of the most fertile soils, rich forest resources, afair balanced distribution of rainfall all years round and a near complete absence ofnatural disasters like earthquake and tornadoes to mention a few. Africa need notpartner with foreigners to extricate itself. It need only reclaim itself and re-engineer itsabundant resources to de-entrap itself from the double-faced globalized world forsustainable development.

6. ConclusionThe NEPAD and its step-child APRM offer themselves as the alternative to Africasunderdevelopment. However, the lack of clarity and vagueness by the NEPAD and theAPRM about the issue of sanction makes it a toothless bull dog that can only bark butcannot bite, and potentially rendered in effective (Akokpari,2004:468) Implementationof the NEPAD agenda means the continued underdevelopment and dependence ofAfrican continent, which, according to Olukoshi (2004:32), no amount of foreigncharity, however altruistic, can redress. The choice words of President BenjaminMkapa of Tanzania are revealing here. He warns that, the way things are going, we in

Africa will soon have no linage beyond geography, no identity besides colour and no

decency except flags worse, we will end up competing to do the masters urging inthe neighbourhood (Ibid).


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Between the two alternatives, the choice is ours though, one is inclined arguecategorically that, Africa is the sphere of interest of the Africans themselves. They musttherefore act from within the African humanistic heritage, to cause development toensue from within Africa. We must end our allegiance to white gods, white prophets,white religions and white ideologies, says Chinweizu, for these are psychological

instruments of white supremacy; and we must return to the black gods, black prophets,black religions and black ideologies of our African ancestors(1998:3). This is a call fora functional attitude of the collective and individual knowledge and spirit of the peoplein retrospective dialogue with the past; a decision to awaken our primal source, to findour way back to ourselves and to help ourselves by inner action to fight for our innerindependence and to free ourselves from economic, political and cultural exploitationby foreign capitalist powers and institutions. It is a rejection of the neo-liberal

philosophy of allowing the strong (Africas partners, foreign donors) to do what they

want and can, while the weak (Africa) suffers what they must. It is a rejection ofeconomic fundamentalism which commandment is that money shall be an end in itself.It is a rejection of the dogma of globalization which holds that the only way our for

humanity is to obey the deadly commandment of money which has become the godtowards which every thing must move and before whom everyone must submit. Thedefining principle of African philosophy calls to question an African human centredsustainable development namely, nyalegh ki been kpa or been ga. Meaning, wealth;material prosperity diminishes in value though, the human person does not. It is astatement of the fact that sustainable development is oiled by the philosophy ofhumanism which itself acknowledges the centrality of man though points to aconsciousness of the limits in which he must live in order not to conduct himself andhis environment out of existence.

The NEPAD may claim African ownership and control. It may strive in collaboration

with benevolent partners from the within and without to develop the capacity to sustaingrowth and development and alleviate poverty in Africa. It may further promise to haltmarginalization of Africa in the globalization process, and to enable the continent tocatch up with the rest of the world though, its grounding on the philosophies ofeconomic fundamentalism and the cherished dogma of the Bretton wood institutionsdisqualifies it as a capacity building African initiative and policy framework that canassure sustained development on the continent. The NEPAD like previous Africanpolitical and economic initiatives has not and cannot promote social justice, equalitybetween African nations and grater democratic control for the bulk of the Africanpeople. Indeed, to argue that African leaders (or rather rulers) have, through theNEPAD, acted in the promotion of the above ambitious goals would be to contradict

the true essential meaning of governance, which true definition is the control of anactivity by some means such that a range of desired out comes is attained (Hirst andThompson, 1996:184).

Sustainable human development on the continent as envisaged in the NEPADdocument of implementation can be forged though, via a new cultural synthesis of ideasand values and a conscious release of the inner energies of the African peoples asexpressed in their indigenous knowledge systems. The global spirit that informs theNEPAD agenda only helps to advance the economic and political interest of foreignbenefactors and a few local collaborators to the exclusion and pauperization of the massAfrican population. But as Hirst and Thompson (1996:182) warns, A world of wealth

and poverty with appalling and widening differences in living standards between therichest and the poorest nations, is unlikely to be secure or stable. African nations must


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therefore choose wisely to advance its growth and development from the aspirations ofits people, to promote the good of its people, every person and the whole person. Thisparadigm of development restores meaning and wholeness not just in humancommunity but in the entire Cosmos. It is a philosophy of human integration whichpriorities ethics over technology, persons over things and the superiority of spirit over

matter.

REFERENCES

African Peer Review Mechanism Base Document 2001

Ake, C. (1981) A Political Economy of Africa, New York, Longman Group Ltd.

Akokpari .J. (2004) Policing and Preventing Human Right Abuses in Africa: TheOAU The AU and the NEPAD. Peer Review International Journal ofLegal Information 32: pp 461-472

Alozie, P. (2205) Education and National Development: A Critique of NEPAD in

Philosophy and Praxis, vol. 1. pp 56-83

Chinweizu (1998) West African Magazine, 7-27 September.

Gambari, I.A. (2004) The New Partnership For African Development: Challenges andProgress in organizing International Support. (NIIA Lecture SeriesNo.85) Lagos, Nigerian Institute of International Affairs.

Friedman, T.L. (1999) The Lexus and The Olive Tree, Farrar Straus, Giroux

Greider, W (1992) Who Will Tell the People, New York, Touchstone

Hirst, P and Thompson, G (1996) Globalization in Question, Cambridge, Polity Press.Kebonang, Z (2005) African Peer Review Mechanism: An Assessment in Indian

Quaterly Vol LXl No.2, April-June

Mbeki, M (2004) in New Age, Tuesday 30

Ntuli, K. P. (2004) The African Renaissance, IKS and globalization for a Truly AfricanUniversity, Pretoria.

Nyerere, J. (1973)Man and Development. Dar Es Salaam, Oxford University Press

Ogundowole, E.K. (2004) Philosophy and Society, Lagos, Correct Counsels Ltd.

Olukoshi, A.O. (2004): Governing the African Development: The Challenges of theNew Partnership for Africas Development (NEPAD) (Niia Lecture SeriesNo. 82), Lagos, Nigerian Institute of International Affairs.

Ramose, M.B. (2002) African Philsophy Through Ubuntu, Harare, Mond Books.

Thandika, M (1998) Toward Development Democracies in Africa, Mimeo, Dakar

Zuobgo, E.J.M (1979) A View from the Third World, Notre Dame

* Alloy S. Ihuah teaches Philosophy at Benue State University, Makurdi. He is on theEditorial Board of SWEM Journal of Religion and Philosophy. He

specializes in Applied Philosophy of Science.


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Documents

New Partnership For Africa,s Development: The African Paradigm