Africa, Development & Aid, Europe, Headlines, Poverty & SDGs

AFRICA: G8 Asked to Keep Its Promises

Julio Godoy

BERLIN, May 10 2007 (IPS) - With only a couple of weeks to go to this year’s summit of the group of the eight most industrialised countries (G8), Africa and its immense needs are again the theme of the day.

Niger Prime Minister Hama Amadou and Togo Prime Minister Yawovi Agboyibo were in Berlin this week to present their demands on economic cooperation with the G8.

They had support. University professors, musicians, philosophers, church representatives and political leaders from numerous countries also gathered in Berlin to discuss ways of supporting African people to deal with their social and economic challenges.

On Jun. 6-8, the heads of government of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States will meet in the German seaside resort Heiligendamm by the Baltic Sea.

As with the G8 summits over the last couple of years, the G8 agenda this year includes a special summit on Africa. “Attention will also be focused on urgent problems in Africa relating to economic development, poverty reduction and the fight against HIV/AIDS,” an official note on the summit says.

But such promises, repeated by G8 leaders for years now, only draw scepticism among development experts and non-governmental organisations.

Catholic bishops from African and European countries came together in Berlin May 2 to declare they were “disappointed” by the “lack of progress” by G8 countries towards the development aid targets set at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, in 2005.

This lack of progress is most visible in official development assistance (ODA) which fell 5.1 percent in 2006, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a group of 30 rich nations.

According to the OECD report, aid to sub-Saharan Africa increased only 2 percent, excluding debt relief for Nigeria. This meagre growth contrasts with the tall promises the G8 leaders made in their 2005 summit at Gleneagles of doubling aid to Africa by 2010.

The bishops called on the G8 to commit themselves again to reaching the target of 0.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) for development aid by 2015, one of the UN targets towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals. These goals, primarily to reduce poverty and promote health and education, were agreed by world leaders in 2000.

“We see wealth and material fortune at the same time as abject poverty,” German bishops said in a joint statement. “While the number of millionaires and billionaires is growing fast in some parts of the world, the numbers of the extreme poor remain stubbornly high.”

Laurent Monsengwo, the archbishop of Kisangani, a diocese in the Democratic Republic of Congo, called on G8 leaders to “realise that there has been a globalisation of economic growth and therefore that there needs to be a globalisation of charity and responsibility.”

Former rock musician Bob Geldof made a similar plea at a meeting in Berlin. Geldof, who launched a campaign for fighting AIDS in Africa with a series of rock concerts in the early 1980s, has been campaigning ever since to raise financial resources to support development policies in Africa.

“If anything works, it’s development aid,” Geldof said at an ‘Intellectual Live 8’ conference May 2. Geldof also demanded that Germany, as host country, achieve the target of 0.7 percent of GDP for development aid.

“There’s no lack of money, there’s a lack of thought,” Geldof said.

‘Intellectual Live 8’ presented eight policy measures to support Africa. These proposals range from unilaterally opening European and North American markets to agricultural products from Africa, to financially supporting African agriculture, health and education, especially for girls and women, and building infrastructure in major cities, especially water supply, treatment and sewage.

Officially, G8 is taking all these subjects into consideration this year. But German officials have not concealed the fact that the G8 interest in Africa focuses also on the abundant natural resources on the continent, and the progress of emerging developing countries such as India and China in tapping such resources.

African-Chinese trade has grown fivefold since 2000 to reach 50 billion dollars in 2006. Chinese investment has risen since 2000 to more than 5.5 billion dollars in 43 African countries, making China Africa’s third-largest economic partner, only behind the United States and France.

Such growth led German Chancellor Angela Merkel to declare that Europe “should not leave the commitment to Africa to the People’s Republic of China.”

“We must take a stand in Africa,” Merkel told a conference on urban development in Berlin in November, less than a week after an African-Chinese business and political summit in Beijing.

“It is obvious that access to natural resources, such as oil and cobalt, makes Africa interesting for Germany and Europe,” German development expert Torben Ehlers told IPS. “And also, that the massive investment from China, India, Iran and other Asian countries puts pressure upon the West to re-establish hegemonic control upon this access.”

 
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