Nepad lays out vision for Africa At the World Economic Forum's (WEF) annual African summit in Durban in June 2002, the central theme was the blueprint for the continent, called The New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad). Nepad is a vision for Africa that aims to tackle issues such as peace and security, good economic, political and corporate governance, and to make the continent an attractive destination for foreign investment. It is a project of the African Union (AU) and has a steering committee of 15 African countries. Founding countries include South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Algeria and Senegal. A Nepad positioning document says: "The New Partnership for Africa's Development is a pledge by African leaders, based on a common vision and a firm and shared conviction, that they have a pressing duty to eradicate poverty and to place their countries, both individually and collectively, on a path of sustainable growth and development and, at the same time, to participate actively in the world economy and body politic." At the WEF conference in June, South African President Thabo Mbeki said that details of Nepad's implementation projects would be made public by the end of this year. The programmes would deal with Africa's infrastructure, energy, human resources, education and health backlogs. Six task teams have been designated to investigate the following priority areas and details of the implementation programmes will be published before the end of 2002: Peace, security, democracy and political governance Economic and corporate governance Infrastructure development Central Banks, the African Development Bank and financial structures Market access and agriculture Debt reduction and foreign direct investment Writing in the ANC web journal ANC Today at the time of the WEF summit, Mbeki, who formulated the African Renaissance concept and is a key driver of Nepad, said: "The challenge to end the economic marginalisation of Africa, and therefore to attract the necessary resources into our continent to ensure its development, stands at the heart both of the vision of an African Renaissance and Nepad. "Without the achievement of this objective, neither the African Renaissance nor the AU nor Nepad will succeed. As an integral part of this, Nepad is focused on the establishment of a new partnership between the north and the south – to end (the old) relationship between the dominant northern donors and the subservient southern recipients of charity." Main initiatives Although Nepad is still too young to have defined concrete programmes, these are the key initatives: Peace, security, democracy and political governance initiative Conditions for sustainable development, namely peace and security, democracy and political governance.