The current African summit in the South African city of Durban will announce the birth of the African Union replacing the Organization of the African Unity.
The miserable economic situation in the black continent was what prompted the African leaders to do away with the old regional African organization and put in its place a strong federation capable of tackling the challenges of the changing times and realizing the dreams of the African people for economic prosperity.
The new recovery plan for the continent called the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), which will become the economic policy of the African Union, will be one of the major topics of discussion at the meeting.
Efforts have increasingly been made by African leaders to overcome the countless obstacles hindering the development of the black continent and improving the conditions of the millions of victims of poverty, civil wars, disease and other social ills. Though the continent is rich in various raw materials and has great potentials, it has also been a victim of plunder, pillage and internal fighting. The partnership is an ambitious African initiative similar to the Marshall Plan the US proposed for Europe in the wake of World War II. But both the US and Europe, which are competing each other in dominating Africa, differ on ways of implementing the NEPAD.
The NEPAD aims at paving the way for economic progress and the social transformation with huge Western investments. Will the leaders be able to adapt themselves to the criteria of the West or will they reconsider the whole matter and find their own solutions more suitable to further the interests of Africans and end the West’s plunder of their continent?
Meanwhile, analysts are skeptical of the prospects of African countries benefiting from the NEPAD because the review committee of the NEPAD will not offer help to some countries which are ravaged by civil wars or because they do not toe the Western line.
It is also feared that the double standards will be applied by the Western investing countries unless the African countries submit to the Western will.
This fear is substantiated by the current Western support to some African dictatorships because they are loyal to the Western powers while a democratic government of the Zimbabwe is being punished in several ways just because it refuses to kneel before them.
According to a South African analyst, the NEPAD stresses on the individual freedom and rights while restricting the state sovereignty. He also noted that there are several nations which do not want to submit to the monitoring process of the NEPAD’s review committee.
Some analysts want to know what will be the structure of the reviewing committee, its method of operation and relations with the Western countries. Let us hope that the African countries agree on new efforts for the welfare of the continent where the poorest of the world live.
