Leaders of the African Union yesterday called on the Group of Eight summit in Gleneagles this week to endorse a reform programme that would increase aid, investment and trade with the continent and wipe out its indebtedness.
Tony Blair's Commission for Africa reported in March with a detailed analysis and recommendations along these lines. Its endorsement by the AU is an important and timely boost for Mr Blair's presidency of the G8 and the agenda he has set out for it on African development. The summit's decisions will need to be examined closely to see how they measure up to these ambitions and in full awareness of how governments can craft large breakthroughs out of what are in reality modest increases of funding or shifts in policy.
The rhetorical and policy parallels between these two summits open up a potentially constructive partnership between the world's richest states and an African leadership now more committed to good governance, creating the conditions for more investment and a better delivery of aid. The AU took over from the Organisation of African Unity two years ago as a more ambitious entity based on more integrated structures. It now has 53 member-states which meet twice yearly in summits and has begun to develop more effective mutual monitoring of policy-making. Its demands for increased aid to fight poverty, reforms in international trade and debt cancellation are more credible as a result.
They will not be without cost to the most developed parts of the world. Reforming international trade along the lines called for by the AU would involve dismantling agricultural subsidies there, which have, in fact been remarkably stable over several decades. This has helped impoverish millions of Africans by crippling agricultural development in many of its countries. The demands for fairer trade reflect this: but it remains to be seen how much real progress will be made towards it, even with the successful mobilisation of international opinion over the last weekend. The statistics on primary poverty in African states are now much more widely known. Some 400 million Africans live on less than $1 a day, 40 million children go without schooling and 11 million die of malnutrition every year.
The practical possibility of overcoming such absolute poverty has been highlighted as never before, in a welcome demonstration of international solidarity. Whether that is best accomplished by the means under discussion at these two summits merits detailed and informed debate. African voices must be far more involved in this discussion, since development will be accomplished mostly by African efforts. The AU has now endorsed a greater role for international investment, and many prominent multinational companies are involved in negotiations on how that can happen. Africa is a rich continent. Its wealth can and must be developed by its people for their own benefit rather than primarily for rapacious ruling elites or well-endowed international investors.