G-8 offer falls short of Africa’s great expectations

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa: They had great expectations but Africans are mainly disappointed by the crumbs that fell from the table of the Group of Eight powerful nations this week. The G-8 leaders’ announcement Friday of an aid package to Africa including a doubling of aid to US$50 billion (euro42 billion), debt cancellation and some progress toward a deal on fair trade, is not seen as enough to alleviate the continent’s grinding poverty. After months of pressure ahead of the two-day Gleneagles Summit hosted by Britain, the final result is generally described as well meant, but too little, too late and without enough safeguards to ensure that African leaders direct the money where it is most needed.

Action Aid, an international development agency which, as part of the Make Poverty History campaign, helped put pressure on G-8 leaders to act on Africa’s dire economic position, dismissed the measures as incapable of “effectively” tackling poverty and failing “to deliver justice for Africa.” Less than half of the money pledged by the G-8 leaders to Africa by 2010 is new, Action Aid said. “If the G-8 is serious about making poverty history, they should announce US$50 billion in aid now, not in five years’ time,” it said. While the promised fair-trade deal was not seen as enough for African farmers, it did signal a shift in the G-8’s approach to extreme poverty, according to Mildred Awino Olweny of Farmers Own Kenya. This British-Kenyan initiative trains farmers in organic production and helps them export crops to lucrative markets in Europe.

Aid workers remain disappointed, she said, that G-8 leaders did not commit to detailed plans to open their markets to products from African farmers, who account for the bulk of the continent’s 870 million population. “What we were actually expecting is for them to provide more quality aid to help African farmers to compete effectively at lucrative markets in the West,” Olweny said. “It is disappointing.” Felix Mutati, Zambia’s Deputy Minister of Finance, said his country’s farmers most needed fair trade. “The whole issue of trade hinges on farm subsidies and the quicker this is resolved, the better for us,” he said. Ordinary Africans who face the daily grim reality of poverty in the form of disease, malnutrition and a lack of basic services like water, sanitation, housing and health, are skeptical about whether their leaders will allow the G-8’s pledge to help their people. 

“They can give us financial aid, but what happens is that the same money goes back to them,” said Joao Bucuane, a retired postal worker in Mozambique. “They send their people to work with us and pay them big salaries. And we are paid low salaries. “We have to be transparent in using the money,” said Liger Tember of Mozambique’s agricultural General Union of Cooperatives. “Our leaders are so greedy. We receive money, but instead of buying medicines, we buy luxury cars for the leaders.” Zambian Member of Parliament Zaphet Moonde agreed. “The tendency in the past has been that such savings have not been used right,” he said.

Mwape Mubanga, a father of six who works as a taxi driver in Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, said the southern African country’s ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy had failed to create jobs during its 14 years in power. “I can’t see them do anything good except to steal the money even if it came.” Some of Africa’s demands, like the cancellation of all debt, called for by the African Union, was destined for failure while leaders like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe remained in power, said Prof. John Stremlau, an international relations expert at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.

“It is not really money that is the problem, but how it is spent,” he said. Perhaps the G-8’s greatest victory was that it “expanded the seating at the high table of world politics,” he said. What is of concern, however, according to Stremlau, is that this will be the G-8’s last focus on Africa. Attention is going to move on to India and China; it has already,” he said.