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G7/8 Summits > 2002 Kananaskis Summit Documents

G8 Africa Action Plan

Kananaskis, June 27, 2002

  1. We, the Heads of State and Government of eight major industrialized democracies and the Representatives of the European Union, meeting with African Leaders at Kananaskis, welcome the initiative taken by African States in adopting the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), a bold and clear-sighted vision of Africa's development. We accept the invitation from African Leaders, extended first at Genoa last July and reaffirmed in the NEPAD, to build a new partnership between the countries of Africa and our own, based on mutual responsibility and respect. The NEPAD provides an historic opportunity to overcome obstacles to development in Africa. Our Africa Action Plan is the G8's initial response, designed to encourage the imaginative effort that underlies the NEPAD and to lay a solid foundation for future cooperation.

  2. The case for action is compelling. Despite its great potential and human resources, Africa continues to face some of the world's greatest challenges. The many initiatives designed to spur Africa's development have failed to deliver sustained improvements to the lives of individual women, men and children throughout Africa.

  3. The New Partnership for Africa's Development offers something different. It is, first and foremost, a pledge by African Leaders to the people of Africa to consolidate democracy and sound economic management, and to promote peace, security and people-centred development. African Leaders have personally directed its creation and implementation. They have formally undertaken to hold each other accountable for its achievement. They have emphasized good governance and human rights as necessary preconditions for Africa's recovery. They focus on investment-driven economic growth and economic governance as the engine for poverty reduction, and on the importance of regional and sub-regional partnerships within Africa.

  4. We welcome this commitment. In support of the NEPAD objectives, we each undertake to establish enhanced partnerships with African countries whose performance reflects the NEPAD commitments. Our partners will be selected on the basis of measured results. This will lead us to focus our efforts on countries that demonstrate a political and financial commitment to good governance and the rule of law, investing in their people, and pursuing policies that spur economic growth and alleviate poverty. We will match their commitment with a commitment on our own part to promote peace and security in Africa, to boost expertise and capacity, to encourage trade and direct growth-oriented investment, and to provide more effective official development assistance.

  5. Together, we have an unprecedented opportunity to make progress on our common goals of eradicating extreme poverty and achieving sustainable development. The new round of multilateral trade negotiations begun at Doha, the Monterrey meeting on financing for development, this G8 Summit at Kananaskis and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, are key milestones in this process.

  6. NEPAD recognizes that the prime responsibility for Africa's future lies with Africa itself. We will continue to support African efforts to encourage public engagement in the NEPAD and we will continue to consult with our African partners on how we can best assist their own efforts. G8 governments are committed to mobilize and energize global action, marshal resources and expertise, and provide impetus in support of the NEPAD's objectives. As G8 partners, we will undertake mutually reinforcing actions to help Africa accelerate growth and make lasting gains against poverty. Our Action Plan focuses on a limited number of priority areas where, collectively and individually, we can add value.

  7. The African peer-review process is an innovative and potentially decisive element in the attainment of the objectives of the NEPAD. We welcome the adoption on June 11 by the NEPAD Heads of State and Government Implementation Committee of the Declaration on Democracy, Political, Economic and Corporate Governance and the African Peer Review Mechanism. The peer-review process will inform our considerations of eligibility for enhanced partnerships. We will each make our own assessments in making these partnership decisions. While we will focus particular attention on enhanced-partnership countries, we will also work with countries that do not yet meet the standards of NEPAD but which are clearly committed to and working towards its implementation. We will not work with governments which disregard the interests and dignity of their people.

  8. However, as a matter of strong principle, our commitment to respond to situations of humanitarian need remains universal and is independent of particular regimes. So, too, is our commitment to addressing the core issues of human dignity and development. The Development Goals set out in the United Nations Millennium Declaration are an important component of this engagement.

  9. At Monterrey, in March 2002, we agreed to revitalize efforts to help unlock and more effectively utilize all development resources including domestic savings, trade and investment, and official development assistance. A clear link was made between good governance, sound policies, aid effectiveness and development success. In support of this strong international consensus, substantial new development assistance commitments were announced at Monterrey. By 2006, these new commitments will increase ODA by a total of US$12 billion per year. Each of us will decide, in accordance with our respective priorities and procedures, how we will allocate the additional money we have pledged. Assuming strong African policy commitments, and given recent assistance trends, we believe that in aggregate half or more of our new development assistance could be directed to African nations that govern justly, invest in their own people and promote economic freedom. In this way we will support the objectives of the NEPAD. This will help ensure that no country genuinely committed to poverty reduction, good governance and economic reform will be denied the chance to achieve the Millennium Goals through lack of finance.

  10. We will pursue this Action Plan in our individual and collective capacities, and through the international institutions to which we belong. We warmly invite other countries to join us. We also encourage South-South cooperation and collaboration with international institutions and civil society, including the business sector, in support of the NEPAD. We will continue to maintain a constructive dialogue with our African partners in order to achieve effective implementation of our Action Plan and to support the objectives of the NEPAD. We will take the necessary steps to ensure the effective implementation of our Action Plan and will review progress at our next Summit based on a final report from our Personal Representatives for Africa.

  11. To demonstrate our support for this new partnership, we make the following engagements in support of the NEPAD:

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I. Promoting Peace and Security

Time and again, progress in Africa has been undermined or destroyed by conflict and insecurity. Families have been displaced and torn apart, and the use of child soldiers has robbed many individuals of the opportunity to learn, while also sowing the seeds of long-term national disruption, instability and poverty. Economic development has been deeply undermined as scarce resources needed to fight poverty have too often been wasted in deadly and costly armed conflicts. We are determined to make conflict prevention and resolution a top priority, and therefore we commit to:

1.1 Supporting African efforts to resolve the principal armed conflicts on the continent - including by:

1.2 Providing technical and financial assistance so that, by 2010, African countries and regional and sub-regional organizations are able to engage more effectively to prevent and resolve violent conflict on the continent, and undertake peace support operations in accordance with the United Nations Charter - including by:

1.3 Supporting efforts by African countries and the United Nations to better regulate the activities of arms brokers and traffickers and to eliminate the flow of illicit weapons to and within Africa - including by:

1.4 Supporting African efforts to eliminate and remove antipersonnel mines.

1.5 Working with African governments, civil society and others to address the linkage between armed conflict and the exploitation of natural resources - including by:

1.6 Providing more effective peace-building support to societies emerging from or seeking to prevent armed conflicts - including by:

1.7 Working to enhance African capacities to protect and assist war-affected populations and facilitate the effective implementation in Africa of United Nations Security Council resolutions relating to civilians, women and children in armed conflict - including by supporting African countries hosting, assisting and protecting large refugee populations

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II. Strengthening Institutions and Governance

The NEPAD maintains that "development is impossible in the absence of true democracy, respect for human rights, peace and good governance". We agree, and it has been our experience that reliable institutions and governance are a precondition for long-term or large-scale private investment. The task of strengthening institutions and governance is thus both urgent and of paramount importance, and for this reason, we commit to:

2.1 Supporting the NEPAD's priority political governance objectives - including by:

2.2 Strengthening capacity-building programmes related to economic and corporate governance in Africa focusing on the NEPAD priority areas of implementing sound macro-economic strategies, strengthening public financial management and accountability, protecting the integrity of monetary and financial systems, strengthening accounting and auditing systems, and developing an effective corporate governance framework - including by:

2.3 Supporting African peer-review arrangements - including by:

2.4 Giving increased attention to and support for African efforts to promote and protect human rights - including by:

2.5 Supporting African efforts to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women - including by:

2.6 Intensifying support for the adoption and implementation of effective measures to combat corruption, bribery and embezzlement - including by:

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III. Fostering Trade, Investment, Economic Growth and Sustainable Development

Generating economic growth is central to the NEPAD's goal of mobilizing resources for poverty reduction and development. A comprehensive effort is required to stimulate economic activity in all productive sectors while paying particular attention to sustainability and social costs and to the role of the private sector as the engine for economic growth. In this context, the particular importance of infrastructure has been emphasized by our African partners - including as a domain for public-private investment partnerships, and as a key component of regional integration and development. In order to achieve adequate growth rates, Africa must have broader access to markets. The launch of multilateral trade negotiations by World Trade Organization (WTO) members in Doha, which placed the needs and interests of developing countries at the heart of the negotiations, will help create a framework for the integration of African countries into the world trading system and the global economy, thus creating increased opportunities for trade-based growth. We are committed to the Doha development agenda and to implementing fully the WTO work programme, as well as to providing increased trade-related technical assistance to help African countries participate effectively in these negotiations. With these considerations in mind, we commit to:

3.1 Helping Africa attract investment, both from within Africa and from abroad, and implement policies conducive to economic growth - including by:

3.2 Facilitating capacity-building and the transfer of expertise for the development of infrastructure projects, with particular attention to regional initiatives.

3.3 Providing greater market access for African products - including by:

3.4 Increasing the funding and improving the quality of support for trade-related technical assistance and capacity-building in Africa - including by:

3.5 Supporting African efforts to advance regional economic integration and intra-African trade - including by:

3.6 Improving the effectiveness of Official Development Assistance (ODA), and strengthening ODA commitments for enhanced-partnership countries - including by:

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IV. Implementing Debt Relief

4.1 Our aim is to assist countries through the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative to reduce poverty by enabling them to exit the HIPC process with a sustainable level of debt. The HIPC Initiative will reduce, by US$19 billion (net present value terms), the debt of some 22 African countries that are following sound economic policies and good governance. Combined with traditional debt relief and additional bilateral debt forgiveness, this represents a reduction of some US$30 billion - about two-thirds of their total debt burden - that will allow an important shift of resources towards education, health and other social and productive uses.

4.2 Debt relief alone, however, no matter how generous, cannot guarantee long-term debt sustainability. Sound policies, good governance, prudent new borrowing, and sound debt management by HIPCs, as well as responsible financing by creditors, will be necessary to ensure debt sustainability. We are committed to seeing that the projected shortfall in the HIPC Trust Fund is fully financed. Moreover, we remain ready, as necessary, to provide additional debt relief - so-called "topping up" - on a case-by-case basis, to countries that have suffered a fundamental change in their economic circumstances due to extraordinary external shocks. In that context these countries must continue to demonstrate a commitment to poverty reduction, sound financial management, and good governance. We will fund our share of the shortfall in the HIPC Initiative, recognizing that this shortfall will be up to US$1 billion. We call on other creditor countries to join us. Once countries exit the HIPC process, we expect they will not need additional relief under this Initiative. We support an increase in the use of grants for the poorest and debt-vulnerable countries, and look forward to its rapid adoption.

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V. Expanding Knowledge: Improving and Promoting Education and Expanding Digital Opportunities

Investing in education is critical to economic and social development in Africa, and to providing Africans with greater opportunities for personal and collective advancement. Education also holds the key to important goals such as achieving full gender equality for women and girls. Yet most African countries have made poor progress towards the attainment of the Dakar Education for All (EFA) goals. In addition, the capacity of information and communications technology (ICT) to help Africa exploit digital opportunities, has not yet been realized. ICT has been identified by the NEPAD as a targeted priority for economic and human development in Africa. With this in mind, we commit to:

5.1 Supporting African countries in their efforts to improve the quality of education at all levels - including by:

5.2 Supporting efforts to ensure equal access to education by women and girls - including by:

5.3 Working with African partners to increase assistance to Africa's research and higher education capacity in enhanced-partnership countries - including by:

5.4 Helping Africa create digital opportunities - including by:

5.5 Helping Africa make more effective use of ICT in the context of promoting sustainable economic, social and political development - including by:

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VI. Improving Health and Confronting HIV/AIDS

The persistence of diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis has remained a severe obstacle to Africa's development. To this burden has been added the devastating personal and societal costs resulting from AIDS, the consequences of which stand to undermine all efforts to promote development in Africa. The result has been a dramatic decrease in life expectancy in Africa and a significant new burden on African health systems and economies. Substantial efforts are needed to confront the health challenges that Africa faces, including the need to enhance immunization efforts directed at polio and other preventable diseases. Therefore, recognizing that HIV/AIDS affects all aspects of Africa's future development and should therefore be a factor in all aspects of our support for Africa, we commit to:

6.1 Helping Africa combat the effects of HIV/AIDS - including by:

6.2 Supporting African efforts to build sustainable health systems in order to deliver effective disease interventions - including by:

6.3 Accelerating the elimination and mitigation in Africa of polio, river blindness and other diseases or health deficiencies - including by:

6.4 Supporting health research on diseases prevalent in Africa, with a view to narrowing the health research gap, including by expanding health research networks to focus on African health issues, and by making more extensive use of researchers based in Africa.

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VII. Increasing Agricultural Productivity

The overwhelming majority of Africa's population is rural. Agriculture is therefore the principal economic preoccupation for most of Africa's people. Agriculture is central not only to the quality of life of most Africans, but also to the national economy of nearly all African states. Increased agricultural production, efficiency and diversification are central to the economic growth strategies of these countries. In support of the NEPAD's growth and sustainable development initiatives on agriculture, we commit to:

7.1 Making support for African agriculture a higher international priority in line with the NEPAD's framework and priorities - including by:

7.2 Working with African countries to reduce poverty through improved sustainable productivity and competitiveness - including by:

7.3 Working to improve food security in Africa - including by:

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VIII. Improving Water Resource Management

Water is essential to life. Its importance spans a wide range of critical uses - from human drinking water, to sanitation, to food security and agriculture, to economic activity, to protecting the natural environment. We have noted the importance of proper water resource management. We note also that water management is sometimes at the centre of threats to regional peace and security. We also appreciate the importance of good water management for achieving sustainable economic growth and development, and therefore we commit to:

8. Supporting African efforts to improve water resource development and management - including by:

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Source: Government of Canada, Kananaskis Summit

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