Following the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000, both African governments and their development partners entered into a series of mutual commitments designed to promote the achievement of the goals in Africa. These commitments were embodied in the ‘New Partnership for Africa’s Development’ (NEPAD) launched by African leaders in 2001 and in subsequent declarations by the African Union, and in the responses which followed from development partners including as parties to wider international agreements such as the Monterrey Consensus, as well as in fora such as the European Union and the G8. In 2003 African leaders asked the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the OECD to undertake periodic joint reviews assessing the delivery of these commitments.

This is the second such review. It has been undertaken jointly by task teams from UNECA and OECD, in close consultation with the NEPAD Secretariat, and with inputs from African and international institutions and civil society.

It is intended to answer 4 basic questions:

• What are the main commitments which have been made by Africa and its development partners?
• Have these been delivered?
• What have the results been?
• What are now the key future policy priorities?

Identifying commitments:

We fi nd that the commitments fall into four main areas. African governments committed themselves to promoting economic growth, investing in the development of their people, ensuring good governance, and mobilizing both public and private resources. Development partners reciprocated with commitments designed to support Africa’s efforts in all these areas. This provides the basic framework for our report.

We focus on commitments made by political leaders collectively, as distinct from national governments individually. In some cases these were broad expressions of policy. In others, they were specifi c resource commitments relating for instance to domestic budgetary allocations, or levels of development assistance. We have not attempted either to ‘name and praise’, or to ‘name and shame’, though we do in some places use case studies to illustrate wider points. Our approach has been to look at overall performance, recognising that underlying this there is a large degree of variation between individual countries, and inevitable exceptions to any general statement.

Delivery:

Much has been done on both sides of the partnership to deliver mutual commitments. Africa has made good progress on its commitments to promoting growth, investing in the health and education of its people, improving governance and mobilizing resources. Development partners have scaled up their fi nancial and technical assistance. But in all these areas more needs to be done on both sides to meet existing commitments, as we set out in more detail in the report. The major collective failure on the part of the wider international community over this period has undoubtedly been the failure to deliver agreement on multilateral trade negotiations, which remains an area of vital interest to Africa.

Results:

Some positive results have been achieved, which are often at risk of being overlooked. Africa has achieved strong and sustained economic growth, outpacing global per capita growth since 2001 after lagging behind for two decades, and helping to reduce the proportion of its population living on less than US$1 a day. Multi-party democracy has taken a stronger hold, and the number of state-based armed confl icts has been reduced. There has been signifi cant progress towards the MDG goal of universal primary education. However the picture on other MDGs, particularly maternal mortality, is deeply worrying, and on present trends, no country in Africa will meet all the MDGs by 2015. There is a need to scale up efforts to improve governance including by consolidating the trend to multiparty democracy. Stronger action needs to be taken to resolve long running confl icts which continue to cause immense human suffering in the continent. Capacity shortages remain a key constraint in all areas.

Emerging challenges:

The challenge of achieving sustained and sustainable development in Africa is not a separate and self-contained issue. It is inextricably linked to what happens in the wider global economy. Africa has already been signifi cantly affected by the food and fuel price shocks of 2008. It is being affected now by the downturn in the global economy and has a vital interest in the new international arrangements for global economic management which will need to emerge. And although it is the region which contributes least to the problem of climate change, it will be profoundly affected by the consequences, and has a major stake in the forthcoming negotiations on a new post-Kyoto framework. These factors are redefi ning what is required of Africa’s development partners.

Policy priorities:

We identify three over-arching policy priorities for African governments:

• Continuing with the agenda for political and economic reform set out in the NEPAD founding statement in 2001, and subsequently endorsed and elaborated by the African Union;
• Intensifying efforts to direct the benefi ts of economic growth and larger government revenue to the achievement of the MDGs; and
• Intensifying efforts to promote regional integration and to develop regional infrastructure.

Similarly, we identify three over-arching policy priorities for development partners and the wider international community:

• Taking full account of Africa’s interests in major forthcoming international negotiations during 2009 both on multilateral trade arrangements, and a post-Kyoto Protocol framework;
• Ensuring that Africa has a larger voice in discussions in 2009 on wider systemic issues, including the reform of the international fi nancial architecture and international fi nancial institutions; and
• Delivering existing commitments to increase the volume and improve the effectiveness of offi cial development assistance by 2010.