ABUJA, March 23: The leaders of 21 African nations will gather in Nigeria next week for a previously unannounced summit to chart a new vision for the world’s poorest continent, a Nigerian statement said on Saturday.

The leaders will attend the meeting on Monday and Tuesday in the Nigerian capital Abuja under the auspices of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

There was no explanation of why plans for a major summit involving so many African leaders had been kept under wraps until just two days before it was to start. Officials from the Nigerian NEPAD secretariat, which issued the statement on Saturday, could not be immediately reached for comment.

The statement said the summit would consider a report on priority projects and programmes for NEPAD.

“These include peace and security, agriculture and market access, capital flows, economic and corporate governance, infrastructure and human development,” the statement said.

A committee which prepared the summit “has drawn up plans on how to match the vision of NEPAD with appropriate implementable and durable Plan of Action”, it said.

In October 2001 the NEPAD idea was formally adopted by a steering committee in Abuja. At that time, the steering committee said a larger meeting would decide later on core projects to be implemented but no date was set.

The NEPAD statement said countries to attend the summit were Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Cameroon, Congo Republic, Gabon, Ethiopia, Mauritius, Rwanda, Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia and Zambia.

Tanzania, Uganda, Sao Tome and Principe and Ghana would attend as observers, the statement added.

Although the G8 group of industrialised nations is taking NEPAD seriously, its leaders have linked support for the new initiative, which envisages tens of billions of dollars’ worth of new investment annually, to moves toward good governance and democracy in Africa.—Reuters