African Countries & the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA)

Perspectives on African Leadership, NEPAD, the African Union, Etc.

The Resource Curse - Governance - Transparency - Corruption - Natural Resource Management

Make Poverty History Website    Live 8 - Official site

Financial Times G8 Summit Page         Jeffrey Sachs' FT Blog on the G8 Summit: The End of Poverty

The Guardian (UK) G8 Summit Page     G8 Information Centre - University of Toronto

Live 8, Gleneagles, and The Fight Against African Poverty. Raymond Garcia. Swans Commentary. swans.com. July 18, 2005

Poverty in Africa isn't history -- or destiny. Emira Woods. Dallas-Fort Worth Star Telegram. July 17, 2005

The G8 and Aid: Between hype and hope. How generous were the aid promises made at Gleneagles? And how new? The Economist. July 14, 2005.

The G8's African challenge. The Economist. July 7 2005

$25 billion question: The difficulty of helping Africa. The Economist. July 2 2005

Helping Africa help itself. Why it's worth giving Africa more aid. Lots more money for Africa will not make poverty history. But it might just do some good. The Economist. July 2 2005.

The G8 Africa Brouhaha: Hot air and little substance. Charles Abugre. Pambazuka News 215: 14 July 2005.

Pambazuka News 214: Focus on G8: Make looting history. 6 July 2005

Africa needs people power. Jerry Rawlings. The Guardian (UK). July 14, 2005.

G8 backs oil and mining transparency initiative but actions speak louder than words. Publish What You Pay Coalition.

Transparency International - Statements on the G-8, Aid, and Corruption. The G-8 must act decisively: Africa's future hangs in the balance.

The end of the beginning. Joseph Stiglitz. The Guardian. July 12, 2005. Debt relief alone won't relieve third-world poverty.

Must Africans say thanks? Michael Dingake. Mmegi (Botswana). July 12, 2005.

Critics wonder: Are G-8 pledges same old story? Even supporters agree commitment needs African leaders to rise to the huge challenge. Warren Vieth. Los Angeles Times. July 12, 2005

Out Of Africa. National Review Online. July 12, 2005. Stereotypes about Africa are so engrained in our psyche that we think Live 8 concerts and G8 plans to increase aid will solve problems, when really the continent and its leaders need some tough love.

It's not the Marshall Plan, but it's a start. Larry Elliott. The Guardian. July 11, 2005.

G8 Summit: Pop Campaign On Africa Fizzles Out. Inter Press Service (South Africa). July 11, 2005. Outside of British officialdom, celebrations over increased G8 aid for Africa were confined mostly to a population of two -- rock stars Bob Geldof and Bono.

G8 Outcome Disappoints African Civil Society. The Post (Zambia). July 11, 2005

While good governance is self-evidently desirable, the west is complicit in the corruption it disavows. In instances where Africans have democratically elected promising leaders, western governments have undermined or conspired in their political elimination and replaced them with puppet regimes. Africa does not need conditional aid, charity or pity. Western governments should be held to account for the exploitation of the continent and make reparations for the pillage that they have inflicted. ....Patricia Daley, Firoze Manji, Paul Okojie, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, and four others

Humiliated once more: The recent focus on Africa reinforces our perception of it as picturesque, pitiful, psychopathic and passive. Madeleine Bunting. The Guardian. July 4, 2005

G8 - Why Africa is the Loser. L. Muthoni Wanyeki. The East African (Kenya). June 20, 2005

Governance:

What's the plan?

Corruption was a main issue highlighted by the Commission for Africa. Nearly a quarter of aid goes on improving a government's ability to govern: how to raise revenue and to account for its expenditure. The commission praised efforts by the New Economic Partnership for African Development (Nepad) to set up a peer group review in which experts working against fixed criteria measure the steps governments take to fight corruption, improve administration and boost accountability. It is a sort of audit commission for African corruption. Some 24 African countries have so far signed up.

Where have we got to?

The issue of good governance is key to understanding any deal at G8. The US, in particular, ties aid so tightly to good governance that it slows the aid flow. At last year's G8 summit in the US, a deal was signed with Nigeria, a trade off between possible debt relief and action against graft. There is still no single kite mark of good governance so different criteria are applied by various countries and lending institutions. The G8 may synchronise this. Another recommendation was for extra resources to expand the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI); in which the industrialised world publishes payments for contracts in oil and gas. The hope is it will deter bribery. Another idea which has emerged in the course of G8 negotiations is a multimillion-dollar fund to improve technology and skills to stem the brain drain of 70,000 skilled Africans who emigrate each year.

The verdict

This subject produces a lot of talk from donors who are anxious that increased aid should not be siphoned off through corruption. On the other hand, western countries are reluctant to close down tax havens and secret bank accounts which allow money to be hidden. A plan for each G8 country to report on the embezzled assets which have been repatriated to Africa each year is unlikely to be passed. But the EITI is a good start in the fight against large-scale corruption surrounding Africa's natural resources. What is more difficult is rooting out the endemic low-level graft often caused by low wages and poverty.

Effort: 7/10; Chances of success: 4/10

..."Governance" has, of course, been identified by the Commission for Africa as the fundamental issue. However, the record of World Bank-inspired governance reforms in Africa is one of abject failure. Only in those rare cases with political buy-in at senior levels have anti-corruption efforts or civil service reform programmes even been attempted. This points to the importance of Africa expert Alex de Waal's aphorism that governance is government minus politics. The answer to why African states have not been as effective as those of east Asia lies in political history.

A colonial inheritance of indirect rule and the scramble for power at independence meant that political leaders relied on dispensing patronage to local chiefs to hold together national alliances. The resulting system of patronage politics has produced leaders more interested in maintaining a flow of resources for elite consumption than in broader development, with oil and mining multinationals happy to facilitate a "spoils politics" in the worst cases. It has also eroded the ability of African states to manage economic challenges. Such politics has survived multi-party reforms of the 1990s, and is entrenched even in "good performers" such as Ghana and Tanzania. In the rare cases where African governments have led successful development and poverty reduction, such as Botswana, or Uganda in the 1990s, leaders have suppressed patronage politics.

If the nature of politics is decisive for Africa, what should the thousands on the streets of Edinburgh be telling G8 leaders? In reality, donors can play only a minor role in a transformation where African politicians will have the central part. The international community should focus its efforts on supporting the emergence of more developmental politics, while making life a lot harder for spoils politics regimes. This means priority action (rather than warm words) on money laundering in financial capitals by the likes of the Abacha family, on ending the tacit tolerance of corporate involvement in corruption, and on transparency about oil and mining revenues.

But the most profound re-think is on aid. Here the counsel is one of political realism, not despair. The Aids crisis means that there is compelling case for a basic floor of aid to Africa. But further aid should be allocated using simple but strict criteria. Where anti-patronage politics leaders are achieving poverty reduction, they should be supported generously and without conditions. Unlike a Richard Curtis film, 2005 is not guaranteed a happy ending. The simple plot device of doubling aid to Africa will not work. It is time to introduce the messy, but real world of politics. ...

A three-day meeting of the Justice and Interior ministers of the Group of Eight wealthy countries this week spent just 30 minutes discussing Africa and ways to support good governance and tackle corruption on the continent...The issue of the damage wrought by corruption in Africa was on the meeting's agenda, and, at the closing press conference on Friday, British Home Secretary Charles Clarke noted that the "desire for joint action" in this regard was "very, very strong".

British Attorney-General Peter Goldsmith said ministers recognised that corruption was a major obstacle to social and economic development in Africa. He said that all G8 countries would work as swiftly as possible to ratify the United Nations convention on corruption and that the G8 would also assist victim states in the recovery of looted assets.

French Justice Minister Pascal Clement was not at the press conference. He had left the meeting earlier without answering questions about the lack of legal action against the French arms firm involved in the corruption scandal which led to the sacking of former Deputy President Jacob Zuma. An earlier request by the Sunday Times for an interview with French Justice ministry officials at the meeting was ignored....

UN chief warns on dangers of Zimbabwe. David White. Financial Times. July 6 2005.

Kofi Annan on Wednesday urged African leaders to break their silence over actions by governments, such as Zimbabwe's, that were undermining the continent's credibility in the eyes of the world....However, Olusegun Obasanjo, president of Nigeria and the African Union's current chairman, said in London on Wednesday he would “not be part” of any public condemnation of Mr Mugabe, although he would offer his “good offices” in the country.

African governments recognised that they needed to improve governance, increase transparency and fight corruption to get more assistance from the west, Mr Annan said. But he cautioned: “What is important and what is lacking on the continent is [a willingness] to comment on wrong policies in a neighbouring country.”.....Criticising the reluctance of African governments to join the international outcry against the evictions, which have displaced hundreds of thousands of people, Mr Annan said: “I've often tried to tell them they cannot continue to treat these situations as purely internal. It starts as internal but it becomes a regional problem. Nobody invests in a bad neighbourhood and if you have just one or two countries behaving that way, that hurts everybody.”

Fresh from an African Union summit in Libya, Mr Annan said continental leaders would present the G8 with “a solid message of what Africa needs”. He rejected the idea that the proposed doubling of aid to Africa would be wasted. “What we are talking about is effective, well-targeted assistance that will have an impact.” The UN chief said African leaders “realise they have to create an environment that will release the energies of their people and encourage investment”.

Making Poverty History in Africa: Beyond Debt Relief. Madaki O. Ameh. This Day (Nigeria). June 28, 2005.

Blair's Agenda for Africa. Badru D. Mulumba. The Monitor (Uganda). June 27, 2005. Rich countries go into the final lap of the G8 summit with little signs that substantial rises in aid are on their minds.

What Can Africa Really Expect From G8 and EU After July 1?. Patrick Van Rensburg. allAfrica.com/Mmegi/The Reporter (Botswana). June 24, 2005.

Africa is Its Own Worst Enemy. Oscar Kimanuka. East African. June 20, 2005.

Let G-8 Open Markets Now. East African. June 20, 2005.

Debt Relief an Empty, Backward Gesture. Kenneth Rogoff. Business Day (South Africa). June 21, 2005

Thanks for the Fish, We'd Prefer a Hook And Line. Michael Okema. East African. June 20, 2005.

Africa 8: Eight women, one voice. A Gideon Mendel/ActionAid project. 8 African women in their own words