Key principles have been identified for a NEPAD capacity building strategy for Africa following a technical meeting at the offices of the United Nations Commission for Africa (UNECA) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 6-8 February 2007.

This workshop was held to translate the outcomes of a Johannesburg workshop convened last November by the NEPAD Secretariat into a strategy framework, as well as to identify implementation approaches at the national, regional, and continental level.

The strategy framework is underpinned by these key principles :

Leadership transformation ;

A knowledge-based and knowledge-driven process that encourages investments in education and institutions of higher learning, research, science and technology ;

Mobilisation and participation of African people to own and take responsibility for the new transformation ;

Mobilisation and utilisation of African skills, locally, continentally, and globally, for the transformation process ;

Enhancing access to and maximisation of African resources for development by creating an appropriate domestic enabling environment politically and economically ;

Ownership

At the country level the strategy will provide a concrete and action-based mobilisation of additional resources and expertise outside of the country, based on a greater pool of African expertise.

It is also linked to an African-owned programme, and therefore is not being implemented in a vacuum. The strategy allows for access to a “standardised” tested approach, and/or methodologies and tools, which can be adapted for country-specific situations but which allows for learning and sharing country experiences.

Two approaches can be used to implement the strategy at the country level :

engagement through the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) as the entry point ;

engagement in non-APRM reviewed countries.

After going through draft approvals and the African Union (AU) processes, the strategy is expected to be finalised and adopted by July 2007, after which implementation will begin in Kenya, Rwanda and Ghana, all having been through Peer Review.

For non-APRM countries the NEPAD Secretariat has already mobilised resources to pilot a country stakeholder engagement strategy with respect to the integration of NEPAD priorities, values and principles.

Seven pilot countries will be used in the SADC region, after which the same programme will be launched in the Economic Community of Central Africa States (ECCAS).

It is anticipated that by the end of 2007, enough lessons would have been learnt and experiences shared among countries to provide a useful tool for monitoring and evaluation. Source : NEPAD News, 16 février 2007