We don't need PhDs. We need managers
... NEPAD - "confused and a little unfocused."
DAKAR, Senegal - Africa's failure to speed its economic development is largely the fault of the continent's leaders, who have been slow to stem corruption, are reluctant to criticize each other and have lost time putting donor funds to work, according to Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade.

Wade, one of the founders of a continentwide initiative to boost foreign investment and reduce poverty, said criticism of Western donors and investors for not adequately helping Africa is largely misdirected.

African leaders "accuse our partners but we are the ones wrong this time," Wade, 78, said in an interview at the presidential palace. "We are not moving."

Wade, a longtime opposition leader, human-rights campaigner and economic reformer, has made a name for himself as a straight-talking critic of the continent's failings since taking office in 2000.

In 2001, he helped launch the New Partnership for Africa's Development, or NEPAD, an effort to lure Western investment, spur economic growth and combat poverty in Africa in exchange for the continent doing a better job of policing its problems, from human-rights violations to corruption.

Breaking with other African leaders, he criticized rigged elections that returned President Robert Mugabe to office in Zimbabwe in 2002, and was the first to recognize Marc Ravolomanana, a popular favorite, as Madagascar's president after the previous administration refused to recognize defeat. The African Union, the continent's leading political body, eventually followed Wade's lead.

At home in Senegal, he has simplified tax codes, cut bureaucratic logjams, negotiated a billion dollars in international debt relief and used the new income to substantially boost public spending on education and health, economic analysts say.

But at a recent NEPAD meeting in Johannesburg, he complained that the organization _ and the continent as a whole _ was spending too much time and money discussing its problems and too little taking action.

"I'm disappointed," he said, in remarks in stark contrast to those of other leaders. "I have great difficulty explaining what we have achieved when people at home and elsewhere ask me that question."

Three years after its launch, NEPAD, he said, had become "confused and a little unfocused."

"We're spending a lot of money and, above all, losing time with repetition and conferences that end and you're not quite sure what they've achieved," he said.

NEPAD officials, including Wiseman Nkuhlu, the South African head of the organization's steering committee, insisted that the group's responsibility is only to create a structure and environment for change, and that development projects are the responsibility of nations and regional groups. Implementing dramatic reform in a continent beset with problems from wars to widespread poverty will take 20 years or more, he emphasized.

But even South African President Thabo Mbeki, another founder of NEPAD and one of its main boosters, warned that delays in bringing real change to Africa could lead to a loss of faith in the project.

"If we lose this moment it will take many, many years to regenerate the enthusiasm needed to take the continent forward," he told delegates at the Johannesburg meeting.

Wade said he is most frustrated by West Africa's inability to put donor funds to use. The region has won a large share of $580 million in African Development Bank funds and $570 million in World Bank contributions for energy and infrastructure projects, he said, and has been offered additional funding from Japan.

But while the Economic Community of West African States now has much of the money in hand, it has so far failed to produce the studies and implementation plans needed to get the projects started, he said.

The region's problem, Wade said, is that it has too many highly educated experts in high-level jobs, but few engineers and capable bureaucrats with the experience to effectively manage projects.

"It's tragic," he said. "We need some people who know how to administer projects. We don't need PhDs. We need managers."

He said he and other leaders hoped to lure highly trained West African expatriates back from jobs with the World Bank and other organizations in an effort to get development projects implemented.

The other serious problems threatening NEPAD's success, he said, are widespread corruption and a reluctance by African leaders to criticize their neighbors for governance and human-rights failures.

Even in Senegal, as in many African countries, "corruption is very generalized and not just at the government level but through the public administration and all levels," he said. "It's a true, real problem. Everyone wants to gain in an unclean way."

In Senegalese society _ and across much of West Africa _ anyone with access to a top job is expected to steal, said Elhadji Alioune Diouf, a trade and economic analyst in Senegal and an economic adviser to the country's former president.

"If you're the head of a financial service and you don't steal, people will say you're foolish," he said. And if an honest man tries to turn in colleagues, "he's out," Diouf said.

In Dakar, graffiti on public walls accuses even the nation's reformer president of graft, calling him a "criminal." But Wade insists he's doing everything he can to stop corruption, by prosecuting offenders _ even the prime minister is under investigation _ and reducing bureaucratic logjams, where bribes are routinely sought for service.

"If we could eliminate 70 or 80 percent of corruption, we wouldn't need many resources from outside Senegal" to develop the country, which remains among the poorest in the world, Wade said. More than half of Senegalese households live below the poverty line, and unemployment is nearly 50 percent.

The other key to improving international faith in Africa, solving problems and winning new investment, Wade said, is getting African leaders to criticize their wayward neighbors. NEPAD's first "peer review" reports are due out in March, on Rwanda, Ghana, Kenya and Mauritius, the first African nations to consent to have their governance and human-rights policies reviewed.

But the continent's worst offenders _ nations like Equatorial Guinea and Zimbabwe, run by dictators and strongmen _ have not joined the voluntarily process, and their neighbors remain reluctant to strongly criticize them or take political or economic action.

Even if nations that join the peer review process are found wanting, "there's no capacity of enforcement, no action at the end," Wade complained.

One way for Africa to jump-start its development, Diouf suggested, is for the continent's nations _ particularly its richest _ to combine their own funds to launch projects and show overseas nations they are serious about change.

"If we want the world to be serious about Africa, we have to show we are serious ourselves about solving the terrible problems. Africa needs to unite, put up its own money and only then go to the West or institutions," the analyst said. "If we give the West a good example, the West will be willing to help us."

Wade said he agrees that Africa must take action toward solving its own problems before it can expect dramatic new help. But he believes NEPAD, despite its shortcomings, will eventually work.

"If we can make people aware the time has come to work, there is no problem," he said. "Then the problems will not last."