An aid group
founded by U2 front man Bono calculates that the Group of
Eight top industrialized nations has delivered only $3
billion of the additional $25 billion promised for
Africa for everything from AIDS drugs to training
peacekeepers.
Now the Africans
and their allies want a new system to make sure rich
nations come through.
The G-8 opened
their summit in northern Japan this week with a discussion
with eight African leaders over the progress in aid
increases to the continent - and how the wealthy
countries have fallen short.
Along with
Algeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa,
Tanzania and the head of the Africa Union Commission, the
G-8 discussed setting up a mechanism to measure their
progress in fulfilling pledges and to hold them to
their word, said leaders and aid groups.
"When the G-8
leaders make various commitments, it's important to
have a monitoring system," said World Bank President Robert
Zoellick, who joined the talks. "I think countries
need to deliver on their promises, and that was the
tone that was generally set in the discussion."
French President
Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were
among leaders who proposed that top Africa advisers in each
G-8 country track promises and periodically compare
notes with African countries on compliance, a Sarkozy
aide said. Aid groups said Japan had floated a similar
proposal for aid goals.
"The good thing
about the discussion was that it became quite clear
that the Africans want to take their fate more and more into
their own hands," Merkel said. "But they also demand
that we fulfill our promises and keep on helping
them."
The G-8 - the
United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, France,
Italy, Canada, and Russia - have been making a lot of
well-publicized promises at their summits.
At the meeting in
Gleneagles, Scotland, in 2005, the group laid out an
ambitious plan to boost aid to Africa by $25 billion a year
by 2010 - more than doubling aid to the continent
compared to 2004.
Last year in
Heiligendamm, Germany, the G-8 followed that up with a $60
billion pledge to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS and other
diseases in Africa.
Bono's aid group,
ONE, calculated that the G-8 had delivered only $3
billion of the additional $25 billion for Africa and that
development assistance for agriculture - increasingly
important because of rising food prices - had fallen
as a percentage of total aid from 1980 to 2004.
A plan to stop
tuberculosis has been significantly underfunded, 33
million African children still do not have access to school,
and drugs for HIV/AIDS patients were available to only
30% of Africans needing them - far short of the goal
of 80%, a report by ONE said.
Charles Abani,
regional director for Oxfam in Nigeria, said one problem
was that countries recycle pledges, announcing aid in one
area such as education, and then moving the same money
to another area to meet new demands - meaning the
total amount of money promised does not increase.
"This whole
business of announcing and reannouncing the same sums of
money in different configurations ... seems to be a habit
now," he said, calling for a mechanism "to get us to a
point where we can work out when people are
recommitting the same money that they've committed
time and time again." (Joseph Coleman AP)
