Abuja — Former South African President Nelson Mandela, Prof. Wole Soyinka and Bishop Desmond Tutu will feature in the forthcoming AU-NEPAD summit in Nigeria, an official said.
Chief Executive Officer, NEPAD Business Group Nigeria, Dr Robert Aniebo, said in Abuja yesterday that the summit was an opportunity to foster development in Africa.

Nigeria will host the first AU-NEPAD summit in Abuja in the first quarter of 2011.

“It’s actually AU-NEPAD week, the first of its kind in Africa and we are going to bring the Nobel laureates—Wole Soyinka, Desmond Tutu, and Nelson Mandela.

“We are bringing them to Nigeria in the first quarter of next year under this summit because these awards to the Nobel laureates are given under the clusters of NEPAD,” he said.

According to him, it is the first time to bring the Nobel laureates together to discuss the problems of Africa and see how Africa can move forward.

He said the summit would discuss issues on debt management in Africa, among others, adding that NEPAD was concerned about the growing rate of debts without reference to their uses.

“We are concerned and we want to be sure that as people are contracting debts that they know the implications of that and how they accumulate over night.”

According to him,  NEPAD would work in collaboration with the Debt Management Office and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on the issue to educate member countries during the summit.

“We are also working on the International donor conference for the Niger Delta and that will take place during the conference.

“We are also going to exemplify entrepreneurship in Africa and we are going to work with ECOWAS on this,” Aniebo said.

He added that issues on the Gulf of Guinea would be discussed at the summit as it was critical for Africa ’s growth.

“These are the areas that we will cover during the NEPAD week and we want to make sure it is purely international and we will bring all the global partners to this conference,” he said