Is it Nee-pad or Nay-pad?
Depending on how you say it, the acronym for the New Partnership for Africa's Development - NEPAD - sounds like one of two things.
1. It's a kneepad, something to cushion the pain of the continent's 800 million people who are begging for foreign aid and investment.
2. It's like napalm, something that will only accelerate a firestorm of protest by people who think aid linked to trade is a bad idea for Africa.
Both pronunciations and both views were in evidence yesterday at the start of a major Montreal conference to talk about Africa and promote the plan.
Organized by the Canadian International Development Agency, the two-day event at the Chateau Champlain hotel has attracted 515 delegates from most African countries and Canada.
Once the conference wraps, anti-NEPAD groups such as CUSO-Québec and the Quebec Association of International Co-operation Organizations have scheduled separate meetings with some of the African delegates, tomorrow and Tuesday.
The discussions are all a prelude to the June 26-27 summit of G8 heads of state in Kananaskis, Alta. NEPAD, written by South Africa, Nigeria and Senegal and redrafted by the G8, is at the top of the leaders' agenda.
Already, the PR blitz is in full swing.
Promoting the Africa plan, 40 Liberal MPs will visit schools and other places across the country between now and the summit, Denis Paradis, Canada's secretary of state for Latin America and Africa, said yesterday.
What's in NEPAD? A mix of carrot (more aid, more investment) and stick (only if the Africans try to clean up corruption and be more democratic), said Bob Fowler, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's pitchman for the deal.
Fowler is Canada's ambassador to Italy and an ex-ambassador to the United Nations. These days - in Calgary a week ago, at McGill University on Friday and at the hotel yesterday - he's stumping for NEPAD.
"Any message adjustment you want me to make?" Fowler asked one of his handlers before giving a speech at yesterday's event, trying to tailor his remarks to an audience full of expectant African faces.
Then he launched into the main message: business investment is good, even if the political left in Canada and abroad disagrees.
"In some parts of the world and, indeed, in some parts of this country the word 'profit' is dirty," Fowler said. "I don't think it's dirty. I think it's absolutely vital to Africa's future."
There were some nods of agreement in the crowd.
"I believe in business," said Abd Elghani Awad El Karim, the Sudanese government's chargé d'affaires in Ottawa, who helped broker a controversial oil deal with Calgary-based Talisman Energy Inc. in 1998.
Human-rights groups say the Talisman income fuels Sudan's civil war by helping the government buy weapons to fight rebels in the south. Talisman is trying to sell its 25-per-cent stake in the lucrative oilfields.
"Yes, some (rights) are universal. But the most basic human right is the right to eat" - and the Talisman money puts food on the table, said Awad El Karim.
What the Chrétien government should do, he said, is take a good chunk of the $500 million it unlocked last fall for its new Africa Fund and give it directly to Canadian companies who want to invest in the continent.
Other Africans said Canada's "clean" reputation will help sell NEPAD.
"Canada doesn't have a colonial past or hegemonic politics, so it can easily speak for Africa at the G8 - we're perfectly at ease with that," said Baudouin Hamuli, who runs a development agency in Kinshasa, Congo.
Opponents of NEPAD say the deal is flawed.
It was cobbled together by African presidents and their bureaucrats without consulting their peoples and borrows heavily from Western governments' earlier failed policies, said Montreal activist Serge Blais.
"Imagine - to get a copy of 'their' proposal, Africans have to download it from the Web site of the Canadian government," said Blais, an Africa expert with the Montreal group Development and Peace. "It's absurd."
- The conference continues today. For a complete agenda and to read the NEPAD proposal, go to CIDA's Web site at www.acdi-cida.gc.ca. For some anti-NEPAD views, go to www.ccic.ca.
- Jeff Heinrich's E-mail address is jheinrich@thegazette.southam.ca.
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