President Thabo Mbeki to attend NEPAD Review Summit

Pretoria – South African President Thabo Mbeki will on Monday 14 April 2008 depart for Dakar, Senegal where he will lead a South African government delegation to the NEPAD Review Summit scheduled for Tuesday 15 April 2008. President Mbeki will be supported in this regard by Ambassador Abdul Minty.

The Summit is expected to discuss among others how to:

• Consolidate and widen ownership and leadership of NEPAD at all levels;
• Ensure more effective engagement and participation by all stakeholders, particularly civil society, private sector as well as parliamentarians;
• Mobilise domestic resources by encouraging production, fighting waste and corruption, promoting better resource control and management, initiating productive projects, and encouraging savings;
• Continue advocacy for expanded and substantial debt relief, increases in direct foreign investment, improved terms of trade and greater access to the markets of industrialised countries including the removal of distorting tariff and non-tariff barriers;
• Establish implementation networks between member states and RECs; and identifying targeted regional and national programmes and ensure predictable and sustainable financing mechanism to sustain coordination;
• Strengthen regional integration particularly through enhanced investment in infrastructure (given the role the latter plays in this matter);
• Expand inter-African trade to consolidate African regional markets;
• Brand NEPAD to facilitate the tracking of its activities and impact;
• Strengthen the institutional and human capacities of  regional economic committees to fulfil their mandates in implementing NEPAD;
• Ensure wider participation in the African Peer review Mechanism; and
• Strengthening NEPAD in all dimensions.

The outcomes of this NEPAD Review Summit will be presented to the African Union Assembly of Heads of State and Government scheduled for Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt in July this year.

Issued by Ronnie Mamoepa on 082 990 4853

Department of Foreign Affairs
Private Bag X152
Pretoria
0001

13 April 2008