5 SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT “Africa faces grave challenges and the most urgent of these are the eradication of poverty and the fostering of socioeconomic development, in particular, through democracy and good governance. It is to the attainment of these twin objectives that the NEPAD process is principally directed.” NEPAD/HSGIC/03-2003/APRM/MOU Annex 1 5.1 Overview 1. The overarching twin objectives of NEPAD, which are underscored by the NEPAD Declaration and for which reason the APRM was instituted, are the eradication of poverty and the fostering of socio-economic development. This is to be achieved on the basis of partnership between the state, the private sector and the civil society, under broadly participatory and accountable democratic political governance. 2. The goal is to improve the quality of life of African peoples, through the pursuit and implementation of policies designed to expand opportunities and options for individual and collective self-development and selfrealisation. It is this same broad objective that provides the seamless web of cross-cutting and overlapping objectives linking socioeconomic development with the other thematic areas (Democracy and Political Governance; Economic Governance and Management; and Corporate Governance), elaborately set out in the NEPAD Declaration. 3. Ghana is arguably one of the most stable countries in West Africa. With its good endowment of natural resources, strong export base and social capital, Ghana was wellpoised towards achieving sustained increase in economic growth soon after attaining independence. Yet, that outcome was prematurely terminated due to the political upheavals that engulfed the country from the mid-1960s. Ghana experienced spurts of growth in the 1960s, propelling it into a higher per capita income bracket. Rapid economic decline set in during the mid-1970s and standards of living plummeted so sharply that Ghana joined the ranks of other low-income African countries. 4. Since the early 1980s, Ghana has sought extensive reforms in an effort to reverse dirigisme and inward-looking policies. The initiation of the Economic Recovery 115