Hailing South Africa as "the driving force behind Nepad", Ghanaian presidential candidate Professor John Evans Atta Mills today arrived in South Africa for a three-day visit which will see him meeting with a range of business and political leaders ahead of Ghana's December elections.

Prof Atta Mills, who served four years as vice-president under former Ghanain president Jerry Rawlings, told a press conference in Sandton that he was looking forward to forging meaningful relationships with South African businesses, saying that partnerships were the only way that Africa could extricate itself from its quagmire of poverty and underdevelopment.

?It is high time we as Africans stopped running to the international donor community to solve our problems,? said Professor Atta Mills. ?With Nepad, African leaders for the first time admitted that they were part of the problem as much as they could be part of the solution. Only Africans can develop Africa.?

Laying the blame for Africa's woes at the door of poor leadership, bad governance and an unwillingness to look within, Professor Atta Mills was fulsome in his praise for South African president Thabo Mbeki, saying Mbeki had blazed a trail for other African leaders to follow.

?We in Ghana share many common ideals with South Africa, and it is important that we give voice to the goals of Nepad by forging South-South relationships in which we marry the efficiency of markets with the compassion of the state to uplift the most vulnerable among us,? said Prof Atta Mills.

Flanked by his press director, former Ghanain Communications Minister John Mahama, an upbeat Professor Atta Mills said he had ?no doubt? that his National Democratic Congress Party (NDC) would win the upcoming poll against the New Patriotic Party (NPP) of incumbent John Kuffour.

He said the key issue on which his country?s election would be fought was the economy, with ordinary Ghanaians battling to make ends meet in a climate of joblessness and spiralling prices. When he came to power, he said, he would be looking to work closely with South Africa to further the objectives of Nepad for the upliftment of both countries and the continent as a whole.

A former Fulbright scholar at the Stanford Law School, Professor Atta Mills is a sought-after speaker abroad on effective governance in Africa and an eloquent champion of Nepad.