ABSTRACT
The Marshall Plan, initiated in 1947 to promote the economic recovery of Europe from the destruction caused by World War II, is the outstanding example of an external assistance programme that produced durable, self-sustaining results. This chapter explores that, for the first time since the 1940s, there is a movement to create political attitudes and structures of governance that are close to the original Marshall Plan and contain many of its distinctive features. This is the combination of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) with the G8's Africa Action Plan, called for at the Genoa Summit in 2001 and agreed to at the Kananaskis Summit. Both NEPAD and the Africa Action Plan are in their early stages. But their shape is clear enough to permit a general comparison with the post-war Marshall Plan. For European to work together they created the new Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), of which the European states were full members.
