WADE: NEPAD has failed

Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade, on Monday announced that the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), has failed.

President Wade was speaking at a press conference in Dakar, following a one-week stay in the United States of America.

Speaking in the presence of diplomats accredited to Dakar, Wade said, "For seven years now, we have noted that we are far from the mindset of NEPAD, which is however clear. The point is to work in a sub-regional and cross-border framework.

Unfortunately, we have not understood the true concept of NEPAD. My brother Meles, who heads the project does not understand the whole idea, so are his other collaborators. Instead, we have beaten about the bush and wasted too much time," Wade explained.

"The improper knowledge of NEPAD by some African leaders has been a major setback to the African continent, since our countries missed the opportunity to get 6 billion Euros  from the European Union to carry out three major projects,” the Senegalese Head of State remarked. According to him, "The compilation of internal development projects at the nations’ level accredited to NEPAD in its annual reports is tantamount to intellectual dishonesty.

When Senegal and The Gambia decided to build a trans-national road to link the two countries, it’s NEPAD. When Ecowas wants to implement a regional powerplant that will supply all its member countries, it’s NEPAD, but not a compilation of what each country has done in its internal development process. NEPAD is to help us achieve what we cannot at a single country level," Wade continued. 

"The redirection of the project has become inevitable, because nobody has yet understood anything from NEPAD and nobody implemented NEPAD," President Wade told the news conference.

In this regard, Wade announced a meeting to be held in Dakar, with Heads of State and government in charge of implementing NEPAD on November 2nd, 2007, in Dakar.

NEPAD aims at bridging the development gap between Africa and the developed countries. It merged the Millennium African Plan (MAP), conceived by Presidents Thabo Mbeki of South-Africa, ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Abdel Aziz Bouteflika of Algeria, and the Omega Plan, groomed by Senegalese President, Abdoulaye Wade.

The two plans became the New African Initiative (NAI), which was later called the New Partnership for Africa’s Development.