Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa said Thursday that under the New Economic Partnership for Africa'sDevelopment (NEPAD), African countries would not allow the international community to dictate to Africa how it should run its affairs.
Mwanawasa told journalists the eight most industrialized nations in the world, the G8, should not be allowed to dictate to Africa how NEPAD can be implemented because it was the brainchild of Africans.
Mwanawasa, who is current chairman of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), said NEPAD, which was born during the OAU summit hosted by Zambia last year, would succeed because it would not be imposed on Africans.
He added the G8 must not tell Africa how it could best solve its problems, but African countries would be telling the G8 how itintends to do this.
Mwanawasa said a number of problems, among them the conflicts and wars, poverty and the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS, had hampered development on the continent.
He said the international community needed to fund NEPAD because the African countries were committed to attaining peace.
He said everything possible was being done to resolve conflictsin war-torn parts of the continent.
The G8 members are France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Britain, the United States and Canada.
And NEPAD is a holistic, comprehensive integrated strategic framework for the socio-economic development of Africa that provides the vision for the continent's developmental program of actions.
(Xinhua News Agency June 14, 2002)
