Posted on 06/28/2002 7:44:20 AM PDT by yankeedame
Aid groups dismiss rich countries' package for Africa
June 29 2002
Leaders of the world's richest nations have announced their long-awaited action plan for Africa, promising a new dawn for the continent, but aid activists said the promises amounted to peanuts.
Leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States - which make up the Group of Eight wealthy nations - issued the Africa Action Plan to drive the continent's development after meeting four African leaders in a Canadian Rockies resort.
However, aid organisations pointed out that the countries spent the same amount every day on subsidies to their own farmers.
Andrew Graham, a spokesman for CARE, one of the world's largest development agencies, said: "If the summit is to result in less poverty in Africa, the rich-country leaders need to commit more."
Phil Twyford, the international advocacy director for the British charity Oxfam, described the debt relief package as peanuts.
"They have given us a report that is full of repackaged, recycled old initiatives and good intentions."
A British spokesman countered that Oxfam's criticism was absurd.
The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said: "This is not old-fashioned aid; it is a genuine partnership for the renewal of Africa.
"We know it is not possible to change Africa unless Africa itself takes responsibility for leading that process of change."
The plan responds to a pledge by Africans to produce clean government and strong economic policies in return for rich nations' renewed investment and official state aid to battle HIV/AIDS, fight poverty and provide basic education for al.
Trying to sum up the difference between old programs and this one, Mr Blair declared: "I think the past has been based on a very passive relationship between us giving money and them receiving it ... from now on that's not the deal anymore. The deal is we're equal partners in this process."
The African commitments are contained in a home-grown New Partnership for Africa's Development, drawn up by South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki, Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo, Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade.
Mr Obasanjo said later that the African participants were satisfied with what he described as a historic turning point for Africa.
The leaders also agreed to check on the progress of an agreement struck this year in Mexico to increase aid to the Third World by more than $A20 billion a year.
Mr Blair and the Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, had committed themselves publicly to a crusade for Africa.
But they were up against a lack of enthusiasm from other countries, including Japan, which has its own economic problems, and France and the US, which show no sign of wanting to end farm subsidies that in effect lock Third World producers out of the market.
There have also been criticisms of the huge costs of the annual G8 summits. The amount that Canada has spent on the two-day event exceeds that country's promise of extra aid for Africa.
Why, we OWE IT to them - didn't you know? What a sorry lot they are IMHO!
Oh HORRORS, you mean we only offered them as much in aid as we give to our own citizans?
Money alone, will not.
And don't forget to drive-out all the communists and marxists. They are the cause of the wide spread famine and anarchy over there. Who am I kidding, the UN would never go for that...
Society's parasites are never satisfied.
It is never enough.
These losers are part of the problem, since they feel entitled to be supported rather than getting a real job and contributing to the created wealth that makes giving possible at all.
So what's new? I just ignore them, and give less.
As an aside, they have the ultimate scam; they want to make sure that rather than having to support 100 million idle and non productive members of humanity (under the guise of compassion) that we create 200 or 300 million by allowing them to breed, until the system will collapse and an unbelievable number will be doomed to their fate.
This reality was once described in a book as the dismal scenario vs the utterly dismal scenario...
Makes total sense, doesn't it.
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