Nepad and the challenge of Africa's development: Towards the political economy of a discourse

In October 2001, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) was released as the blueprint for addressing Africa's development crisis. In the period since its release NEPAD has faced the curious dilemma of being hailed as a visionary document, especially in the West, and being severely criticised by a range of African civil society institutions. Much of the criticism of NEPAD has focused on procedure — the lack of consultation in its drafting — and its neoliberal policy orientation. The latter underscores the sense of betrayal that comes through much of the civil society resistance to NEPAD. The question though is this: Why would a group of African leaders, who seem genuine in their concerns, take responsibility for such a policy framework? We argue that the explanation lies in the complex interaction between a set of developments since 1980: the neoliberal hegemony at the level of state policy-making, the internal policy atrophy, the coercive power of compliance, but equally the new constituencies (class forces) that have been thrown up in the last two decades — within the state, economy, and importantly the civil society in sub-Saharan Africa. It is in this sense that we speak of the structural adjustment of African politics and civil society. Much of the latter is premised on the ‘death of the emancipatory project’ and the dominant politics of the petty bourgeois class in Africa. These constitute the class and ideological premises of NEPAD and the need to understand NEPAD as a class project.