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Modernity, Globalisation and Complexity | 143 Pan-Africanism as a movement and intellectual force is as old as the ruthless imposition of colonialism in Africa. Colonialism’s advent was a brutal one, fashioned in 1884–1985 when European racists carved up Africa into fiefdoms, the impact of which has been felt for over 125 years and the legacy of which lingers on. German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s conference of 1884 invited representatives from Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium and Germany, with America as observers, as they plotted the ‘effective occupation and management’ of African colonial ‘possessions’.1 It was a response to this act that triggered the continent’s pan-African movement. The strategic objective of the first 100 years of pan-Africanism was to put an end to colonial occupation and white domination in Africa. The last quarter century , from about the late 1980s to the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, has been preoccupied with two interrelated questions: How should Africa complement achievements in the area of political liberation with advancements in the area of socio-economic upliftment and development? And, secondly, having settled the question of self-determination and sovereignty (if not in practice, then at least in concept), that is, who should govern in Africa and over Africans, the strategic question that needs attention in the present conjuncture is: How should governance be exercised by Africans, over Africans, throughout Africa? This chapter seeks to contribute to explaining how Africans proceeded over the decades to try to answer one of these sub-questions, that is: What arrangements are necessary to put in place an appropriate socio-economic and development architecture that would help Africa overcome a century of colonial domination, settler colonialism and white minority domination? Specifically, the chapter seeks to interrogate the legacy of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) as a socio-economic development and neopan -Africanist plan of renewal and renaissance for the continent. NEPAD was launched in October 2001 as a new, progressive development paradigm for Africa, building on the celebrated continental development plans, like the Lagos Plan of Action and the African Alternative Plan to Structural Adjustment. When NEPAD’s foremost architect, former South African President Thabo Mbeki, was unceremoniously removed from office in September 2008 by Modernity, Globalisation and Complexity: The Legacy and Future of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Ebrahim Fakir and Chris Landsberg 6 Chapter 144 | The Africana World: From Fragmentation to Unity and Renaissance being ‘recalled’ by the ruling African National Congress, doubts began to surface as to whether NEPAD would survive the departure of such an instrumental player. After all, one of NEPAD’s major challenges was the fact that it was personalised. It was closely associated with Mbeki, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and the Algerian president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Other architects included Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, former Mozambican President Joachim Chissano, former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa, former Ghanaian President John Kufuor and Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi, among others.2 With the departure of so many of the instrumental people behind NEPAD, it is now an appropriate time to reflect on NEPAD’s development legacy and trajectory, and to consider NEPAD’s future. This implies a consideration and reconsideration, and possibly a rethinking, of the conceptual underpinnings, theoretical precepts and philosophical basis of NEPAD. We contend, as the chapter demonstrates, that NEPAD served as both a modernisation strategy and a development plan. NEPAD bridges the earlier, and, we propose artificial, binary between development on the one hand and modernisation on the other. NEPAD aimed for social and political modernisation, as well as advancement, and sought to achieve these goals within the context of market and economic development. In making a modest contribution to the debate on NEPAD, and contemplating what its future might be, we trace its conceptual, theoretical and ideological underpinnings by looking at NEPAD as dialectical modernisation, and at the manner in which this theory has informed its policy philosophy and political agenda. However, any consideration of NEPAD cannot remain at the abstract level. Consequently, we examine aspects surrounding the implementation of NEPAD through a consideration of the political governance strategy of NEPAD, the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM); the NEPAD economic and corporate governance programme ; and the programme’s Environment Initiative. Because improved policy, politics and economics are meant to translate into better government for the people of Africa, the role of African people in relation to NEPAD and its...

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