Regional Resources Africa

The Africa Partnership Forum

The Africa Partnership Forum (APF) will meet for the 5^th time in London in October 2005 to talk about economic growth, education, HIV/AIDS, peace and security, and food security.

It will develop the Gleneagles Plan of Action from the 2005 G8 meeting in Scotland, and be responsible for the allocation of funds, implementation of the plan and monitoring commitments made by the G8 governments.   

G8 partners contribute 74% of the Official Development Assistance (ODA) to Africa. With the addition of 11 other countries the participants in the APF account for some 98% of ODA to Africa.

Another of its objectives is to maintain international support for NEPAD (New Partnership for Africas Development).

The APF also includes personal representatives of the heads of five key international institutions: IMF, OECD, UN, World Bank and the World Trade Organization as well as 20 African members of the NEPAD Heads of States and Government Implementation Committee (HSGIC).

The Commission for Africa final report

The Commissions final report recommends that donors reverse the decline in aid to water and sanitation and has also promised a $10 billion infrastructure fund, to be based on the NEPAD programme. Some NGOs are calling for 20% of the infrastructure fund to be ring fenced for low-cost pro-poor water and sanitation. 

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Representatives of leading African networks and organisations across Africa have released a joint statement on their initial response to the Commission for Africa report.

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African Development Bank (AfDB) Water Week, June 2004

The AfDB water week celebrated water in Africa and aimed to build partnerships for delivery of the water and sanitation MDG. The AfDB outlined their plans, including the possibility of direct funding for NGOs. An investors coalition was suggested for coordination of investment in the sector and mobilization of African capital funds, tying into a water privatisation agenda as private capital will require a rate of return on its water investment.

At a parallel event AMCOW ministers discussed financing of water investments and various regional initiatives, such as the EU Water Initiative. It was also decided that The African Water Facility, hosted at the AfDB, will be managed by 5 African water ministers; 5 donors, 1 NEPAD & 1 UN-Habitat representative who will determine the allocation of $600 million to start-up the priority activities presented by AMCOW at the PanAfCon on Water last year.

Read the full report

ANEW - African Network of Civil Society Organisations on Water

ANEW was established in October 2003 at a meeting organised by Freshwater Action Network, hosted by ELCI in Nairobi and attended by 40 representatives of African NGOs from all over the continent.

ANEW aims to facilitate and support the participation of African CSOs in water policy formulation and implementation of development plans in the Africa water sector. 

ANEW was launched during the AMCOW Pan-African Implementation and Partnership Conference on Water, Addis Ababa, December 2003.

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G8 Africa Action Plan

View the G8 Africa Action Plan

The G8s Action Plan on Africa is the G8 countries response to NEPAD, if it fails it will be condemned as a PR stunt designed to show that the managers of the globalisation process care about poverty.

The World Development Movement (WDM) believes that the production of a G8 Action Plan on Africa represents an opportunity for the leaders of the worlds richest nations to turn their grand rhetoric into concrete change for poor people in Africa. The test will be whether G8 nations can deliver on their own responsibilities, i.e. relating Africas poverty to its legacy of colonialism, the support of the G8 for repressive regimes in the Cold War, the debt crisis, and the failure of structural adjustment policies, instead of laying the blame on Africa.

The WDM stresses the importance of the debate being led by African Voices and listened to by the governments of G8 countries. The G8 must resist the temptation to use its Action Plan for Africa as a means to make NEPAD into another tool to achieve the G8s market access aims.

G8 Action Plans Promises for Improving Water Resource Management

• Supporting African efforts to promote the productive and environmentally sustainable development of water resources
• Supporting efforts to improve sanitation and access to potable water
• Mobilizing technical assistance to facilitate and accelerate the preparation of potable water and sanitation projects in both rural and urban areas, and to generate greater efficiency in these sectors
• Supporting reforms in the water sector aimed at decentralisation, cost-recovery and enhanced user participation

NGO comments on the G8 Africa Action Plan

 Meeting in their rocky mountain retreat, at a safe distance from the world's media, G8 leaders listened to Africa; undoubtedly a step in the right direction. But they also had the opportunity to write their names indelibly into the history books on Africa. All they managed were a few notes penciled into the margin. [Christian Aid]

Our hopes for progress on trade, increased aid, and more funding for education were largely unfulfilled. The G8s Africa Action Plan contains a framework, but too few concrete actions and too little money.  [Oxfam]

Mr. Blair's pro-Africa stance, while shared by some other G8 leaders, is not matched by either the US or Japan. There is a real danger that the summit may founder on this obstacle. It looks likely that there will be little progress on debt relief, trade and funding for education. [CAFOD]

New Partnership for Africas Development (NEPAD)

Read FAN Briefing on NEPAD

What is NEPAD?

NEPAD has come out of MAP and OMEGA initiatives and has been initiated by 4 African countries (South Africa, Nigeria, Algeria and Senegal). NEPADs leaders feel they have a pressing duty to eradicate poverty and to place their countries, individually and collectively, on the path of sustainable growth, development and active participation in the world economy and body politic. The partnership refers to establishing new relationships with industrialized countries and multilateral organizations. It is a long terms strategy which is anchored on the basis that Africans are determined to extricate the continent from underdevelopment and exclusion in a globalising world.

The Programme of Action

The Programme of Action has mapped out various priorities for sustainable development:

• Peace & Security
• Democracy and Political Governance
• Economic and Corporate Governance
• Sub-regional approach
• Human Resources Development
• Agriculture
• Environment
• Culture
• Science & Technology Platforms
• Capital Flows
• Market Access
• Bridging the Infrastructure Gap:
• Information and communication
  • Technologies and Energy
  • Transport
  • Water and Sanitation

NEPADs Water and Sanitation Initiatives

Objectives

• To ensure sustainable access to safe and adequate clean water supply and sanitation, especially for the poor
• To plan and manage water resources to become a basis for national and regional cooperation and development
• To systematically address and sustain ecosystems, biodiversity and wildlife
• To cooperate on shared rivers among member states 
• To effectively address the threat of climate change
• To ensure enhanced irrigation and rainfed agriculture to improve agricultural productionn and food security. 

Actions

• Accelerate work on multipurpose water resource projects, e.g. the SADC Water Secretariats investigation of the utilisation of the Congo River, and the Nile Basin Initiative.
• Establish a task team to make plans for mitigating the negative impact of climate change in Africa.
• Collaborate with the Global Environmental Sanitation Initiative (GESI) in promoting sanitary waste disposal methods and projects.
• Support the UN Habitat programme on water conservation in African cities.

NGO Response to NEPAD

Drawbacks:

• NEPAD is a capitalist not a social initiative, there has been a lack of communication from NEPAD to civil society and public operators.  
• It is a long-term strategy which does not address the immediate needs of the poor (HIV/AIDS, unemployment, education).
• Debt relief is sustained not total and NGOs are suspicious of donor commitment, particularly their bilateral instead of multilateral approach i.e. backing winners.  
• African leaders holding each other to account is welcomed but there is a danger of splitting African into deserving and undeserving poor.

Opportunities:

• Promoting self-reliance
• Challenges perception that Africa is hopeless 
• Has put Africa back on global agenda
• Promotes greater accountability of African governments 
• Could provide an African block in institutions

Related Information

View the NEPAD website.

Comment on or read other FAN members comments on NEPAD.

February 2004 News Article on NEPAD

3rd World Water Forum Commitment to Action in the Day of Africa

To achieve the MDGs African governments, under the umbrella of AMCOW, have committed to pursue the following :

• Form the Africa Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW) and the Africa Water Task Force (AWTF) to develop, coordinate and chart the impact of various water initiatives in Africa (eg. the EU and CIDA water initiatives).
• Prepare the NEPAD water agenda - based on the Africa Water Vision and Framework for Action.
• An Africa Water Facility to facilitate pooled funds for capacity building and investment support in Africa.
• To position water-related issues high on the development agenda and mobilise domestic resources to undertake investments in the sector.
• A road show within Africa to highlight key issues relating to water and sanitation and the MDGs. 
• Launching of the Nile Basin, Nubian Aquifer and other shared water resources initiatives,
• Adoption of programmes targeted at women, rural and urban poor for efficient and sustainable use of limited water resources to promote economic development, income generation and food security.
• Reduce and mitigate water-related disasters as well as studies on vulnerability and adaptation to minimise the impacts of climate change.

Recommendations

African governments call upon their Development Partners to support actions already taken and to join them and their civil society and other stakeholders to:

• prepare a common African regional strategy for the management and development of Africas water resources at national and transboundary levels and for the achievement of the MDGs for water supply and sanitation;
• prepare national IWRM and water efficiency plans by 2005, in accordance with article 25 of the WSSD, as input for providing economic justification for including water supply and sanitation as well as water resources management into PRSPs;
• create awareness on MDGs, promote national and local level commitments, prepare action plans with annual MDG targets, and provide adequate allocation of financial and human resources to ensure implementation;
• promote appropriate institutions to ensure the sustainability of investments in the water sector in general and in water supply and sanitation in particular;
• foster greater partnerships between the public, communities and the private sector to tap human and capital resources for WSS requirements;
• contribute to the African Water Facility. 

African Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW) April 2002

African Ministers met for the first time to discuss the African water situation in Abuja, Nigeria in April 2002, as an outcome of the Bonn Water Conference in 2001.

The response to the African situation

The destiny of the African continent is in the hands of its people. In relation to water, ministers responsible for water resources have a special role to play.

To strengthen institutional arrangements for the water and sanitation sector in Africa to bring water and sanitation services to the people.

To strengthen intergovernmental co-operation in order to halt and reverse the water crisis and sanitation problems.

Monitor progress in the implementation of major regional and global water resources.

Enhance and solidify intergovernmental and regional co-operation in the management of shared waters, including surface and groundwater.

Engage in dialogue with regional economic groupings and with regional and global financial institutions.

Institutional arrangements

AMCOW established a steering committee, which works in close co-operation with the African Water Task Force

Will promote the goals of the water-related components of NEPAD

Africa Ministers Declaration 

EU Water Initiative