Posted on 06/29/2002 1:39:09 AM PDT by sarcasm
A plan for African development hailed by the world's industrial powers as a possible turning point for the impoverished continent failed to please some of those it was intended to satisfy.
"The hot-air brigade returned a scandalous plan for no action on Africa. They recycled stale commitments without saying how and when they would act," said Neville Gabriel, a South African Catholic Bishops Conference director.
The Group of Eight concluded its two-day summit Thursday in Kananaskis, Alberta, by endorsing the New Partnership. Initiated by African leaders, the plan is based on the idea that foreign investment will help spur development more than foreign aid, so African nations must create societies attractive to investors by embracing stability, the rule of law and good governance.
But aid groups, charities and others that defend the poor criticized the plan, instead calling it a revised version of the old model of foreigners dictating what to do, backed by vague promises of aid that never get kept.
"There is no new thinking," said Njoki Njorge, director of the Washington-based 50 Years is Enough group that opposes policies of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. "We have seen the same old ideas be repackaged and renamed."
Njorge said the G-8 plan failed to emphasize the AIDS pandemic and that the only initiative regarding water involved privatization, which denies access to the poor.
"We need a new environment where Africa can succeed, not one for multinational companies to engage in more partnerships or do more investments," she said.
Western and African leaders said only time will tell if the reforms and pledges called for under the New Partnership get met, but they called it the best chance for some of the world's poorest countries to get help by taking responsibility for their problems.
"All the conditions that are in this partnership will be hard work for both parties," said Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, host of the G-8 summit and a driving force for the Africa plan.
The plan of the summit nations — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States — offers help in ending some of Africa's most intractable conflicts in Congo, Sudan, Angola and Sierra Leone by promoting continental peacekeeping, and calls for donor nations to work toward giving half of all new development aid to Africa.
It gave another $1 billion to debt relief and set a target of eradicating polio by 2005.
The New Partnership says that to cut poverty in half, African countries must have annual economic growth above 7 percent for the next 15 years — double the continent's growth in 2001.
Africa receives less than 1 percent of the world's foreign investment, much of it concentrated in the extraction of natural resources, such as diamonds and oil. And since 1990, development aid to Africa has fallen 43 percent to $16.4 billion in 2000, according to a U.N. report.
But no specific dollar figure was offered and the G-8 leaders spurned African proposals for funding large-scale infrastructure projects, side-stepped the issue of rich farm subsidies freezing out African imports, and ignored the partnership's ambitious targets for debt relief.
Said Elvis Musiba, chairman of Tanzania's Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture: "We had a lot of expectation, and as usual they talked about wanting to help Africa but no concrete commitment was given. It's like they are playing with our minds. It's up to us to look for our own solutions to be able to fight on."
Kenya's Daily Nation said the G-8 leaders listened politely to the Africans, but in reality they were more interested in discussing their own trade relations or the war on terror.
"What the industrialized countries must realize is that Africa and its myriad problems cannot be wished away," the editorial said. "There will be no globalization if a large part of the globe is left to fester in its own rot."
Yup.
That about says it all. WE DON'T WANT YOUR GLOBALIZATION!
You want some new thinking? How's this: Solve your own damn problems.
I think you mean "Animal Farm," don't you?
Funny, but I've never connected Animal Farm with Africa before, only with Communism.
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