A Decade of NEPAD - Economic Commission for Africa - uneca

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48 A Decade of NEPAD: Deepening African Private Sector and Civil Society Ownership and Partnership 2009 AFRICAN BUSINESS TOP 500 – AGRO INDUSTRY COMPANIES RANK IN 500 COMPANY COUNTRY TURNOVER US ($bn) 17 SAPPI SOUTH AFRICA $5.30 29 SAB MILLER SOUTH AFRICA SOUTH AFRICA $3.96 53 TIGER BRANDS SOUTH AFRICA $2.40 66 PIONEER FOODS GROUP SOUTH AFRICA $1.73 71 ALTADIS MAROC MOROCCO $1.58 74 CEVITAL ALGERIA $1.55 100 DISTELL GROUP SOUTH AFRICA $1.18 102 AFGRI SOUTH AFRICA $1.15 116 ILLOVO SUGAR SOUTH AFRICA $1.01 119 NIGERIAN BREWERIES NIGERIA $0.96 What is missing in Africa, even in South Africa, whose economy comprises 40% of the African economy, is a robust and dynamic tier of medium sized enterprises. The 10% of the private sector represented by Africa’s transnationals easily account for nearly 50% of gross domestic production. Supporting private sector enterprise growth and development is where the opportunity – and greatest challenges lie. An additional component of the African private sector that has historically been being under resourced and lacking adequate capacity is the sector comprised of organized business bodies on the continent. However, in the past fifteen years, significant effort has been undertaken to strengthen African chambers of commerce, and also African trade, sector and professional associations. The efforts begun in the late 1980s to promote private sector involvement in economic development, also suggested that in addition to adhoc and informal consultations between private sector and government, there should be formal mechanisms for engagement that offered membership in economic and social councils. While some countries embraced this concept and established designated forums to help foster public-private dialogue and partnership, (including Ghana, Botswana, Senegal, Malawi and Tanzania) most African countries have not instituted such structures nor consistently worked to include their private sectors in their economic decision making programmes. Yet, organized business across Africa is continuing to grow, and beyond just national structures, increasingly, regional structures (often aligned with the regional economic communities) are forming to ensure that African private sector voices are heard as policies are developed and their related interests are taken into consideration during deliberation about economic policy and programmes. Furthermore, a few business structure are also aligning national apex organs to be able to develop a coherent pan- African voice to engage with organs such as the African Union and NEPAD and to interface with bilateral business groups such as the U.S.’ Corporate Council on Africa and France’s CIAN. In November 2008, the UN Economic Commission for Africa helped facilitate the All African Chambers of Commerce Conference, a continental gathering of national apex chambers of commerce from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Libya, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania (and representatives of chambers from Burkina Faso, Burundi, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Swaziland, Uganda and Zimbabwe) under the theme “Private Sector: A Venue for African Renaissance”. The aim of the conference was to see how best to resuscitate the Federation of African Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Agriculture and Professions organ that had been established in Egypt in 2005, but which was effectively moribund having never convened a formal annual general meeting nor engaged in any operating programmes. The aim of this meeting was to develop an organ that would serve as “one platform, one voice, and one vision of the African national chambers”. The African Union along with the UNECA participated in the conference as observers.
Out of this forum an Interim Steering Committee was established with South Africa elected as Chair, Nigeria Deputy Chair and Ethiopia serving as Secretary. Indeed, the Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce and Sectoral Associations was nominated to serve as the organ’s Secretariat. The Ethiopian government has agreed to provide the body, renamed the Pan African Chambers of Commerce (PA- CoC), with office space and the AU and UNECA have pledged to continue offering support as observers of the process. One of the oldest pan-regional business bodies on the continent, and arguably the body that has been most active in the NEPAD process to date is the African Business Roundtable. Headquartered in Nigeria, the organ is comprised of leading African business men and women and was established in the late 1980s and early 1990s by the former president of the African Development Bank, Mr. Babacar Ndiaye. The aim of the ABR in its early days was to serve as an advocacy body for the African private sector and as a body of African business ambassadors with whom international business bodies could engage as they pursued joint venture and FDI and private sector support programmes in Africa. As the convening founder and Secretariat of the NEPAD Business Group, the ABR remains active in promoting issues related to private sector involvement in Africa’s economic development processes and enjoys an influential relationship with pan-African organs such as the African Development Bank and the African Union, in addition to NEPAD. Beyond the pan-African business organs, the Regional Economic Communities have been instrumental over the past five years in bringing together the private sector in their respective regions to engage on matters of regional integration and strategy. These regionally focused private sector bodies have also increasingly sought to facilitate intra-regional trade, advocate for regulatory harmonisation, and increase the voice of industry in government decision making processes at both the national and subregional levels. Examples of some of these organizations include: the East Africa Business Council, the COMESA Business Council, the SADC Business Council and SADC Business Forum, The IGAD Business Forum, The West Africa Business Association, the ECOWAS Business Forum, and the West Africa Chamber of Commerce and Industry. 4. NEPAD and the African Private Sector Today A Decade of NEPAD However, the challenge with many of these regional organs is that they often are resource constrained and where not resource constrained represent a comparatively small constituency of trans-regionally active companies. Yet, as they provide a unique perspective about where business impeding red tape, government corruption and bureaucracies lie, they can offer valuable analysis to regional economic communities about the member states and as such, are valuable allies to those working on matters of regional integration. The 2006 analysis on regional integration in Africa conducted by the African Union and the Economic Commission for Africa and entitled “Assessing Regional Integration in Africa II: Rationalizing Regional Economic Communities” 62 found that respondents to the study noted the following: “. . . [T]oday the role of the private sector in regional integration is growing. . .. One area where the private sector can have a positive impact is political decision-making at the national and regional levels. A well organized private sector can participate in policy formation, provide advice to governments, and lobby for continued implementation of positive reforms. In this respect, it is important for the private sector to be active in conceptualizing, designing, formulating and adopting integration programmes. By providing human and financial resources for regional projects, the private sector also creates jobs, increases market size, and includes positive externalities, including technological spill-overs. With the right conditions and support, the private sector can generate the wealth needed to stimulate growth and finance regional projects . . . ” The study further noted that the principal mechanisms that were used for involving the private sector in regional integration processes were: ӹ Periodic meetings with the private sector – 84% of respondents ӹ Trade fairs – 68% of respondents ӹ Specific regulation and policy forums – 56% of respondents ӹ Training and seminar programmes – 56% of respondents ӹ National debates and policy forums – 48% of respondents ӹ Exchange programmes – 20% of respondents 62 ARIA II: Rationalizing Economic Communities, UNECA and AfDB, 2006, pp.86-88 49
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