NEPAD AND AFRICA’S DEVELOPMENT CRISIS: A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF AN INITIATIVE’S CAPACITY FOR SOCIO-ECONOMIC REVIVAL OF AFRICA IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Abstract

With all her natural endowment, Africa at the dawn of the 21^st century remains the poorest and most problematic region of the world. Apart from excruciating hunger and abject conditions ravaging a massive proportion of the population of this region, diseases especially Malaria and HIV/AIDs continues to threaten at a somewhat volatile scale. Worse still, communal and national conflicts which often lead to erosion of peaceful coexistence and frustrate development in all ramifications have remained the hallmark of the region. Several regional and sub-regional bodies with sophisticated developmental initiatives put in place to address Africa's developmental quagmire have not delivered successful results. NEPAD, an integrated development plan that address key social, economic and political priorities in a balanced and coherent way is a strategic framework for the socio-economic development of Africa. Even though NEPAD, as an initiative for economic and social revival of Africa was never formulated to compete with other initiatives of its kind seeking to address Africa's development crisis, the truth is that NEPAD is distinguished from previous initiatives by the political commitment behind it. This paper takes a cursory look at Africa's economic, social and political woes It observed that though NEPAD is an improvement in terms of strategy and content of policy documents on all previous continental development initiatives, capacity for proper implementation remain its bane, it concludes that until NEPAD'S policy content and strategy are matched with courageous implementation, the overwhelming ambition for Africa's socio-economic revival in the 21" century may not be attained.