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African leaders ask G8 to honor aid promise
(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-08 07:16 TOYAKO, Japan: African leaders Monday urged the Group of Eight (G8) nations to keep their promises of help and reminded them that soaring oil and food prices had worsened poverty in the continent. Activists have accused the world's eight richest countries of reneging on the promise they made at their 2005 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, to double their amount of aid by 2010 to $50 billion, half of which would go to Africa.
"Some African leaders just wanted to emphasize that though they appreciated G8 leaders' commitment to help Africa they just wanted to say they would like to see these commitments implemented fully," Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kazuo Kodama said. African poverty topped the agenda at the start of a three-day G8 summit in Japan's northern resort of Toyako on Hokkaido island. It is linked closely with rising food and fuel prices and the contentious question of how to fight global warming, which the leaders will tackle later in the week. Citing a final draft of the G8 leaders' communique, Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported Monday that they would call rising food and oil prices a "serious threat". Japan invited the leaders of Algeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania to join the day's discussions at a luxury hotel in Toyako. "African leaders asked for the G8 leadership to help those badly hurt by rising oil prices by showing their leadership in talks with OPEC countries," a Japanese official said after the meeting. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and World Bank President Robert Zoellick both said rich nations need to strengthen their efforts to meet the goals of poverty reduction and education because of instability in the world economy. Last month, a report by the Africa Progress Panel, set up to monitor implementation of the Gleneagles commitments, said that under existing spending plans the G8 will fall $40 billion short of its target of $50 billion.
This year marks the halfway point of reaching the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by the UN General Assembly in September 2000 to reduce world poverty by 2015. With grain prices having doubled since January 2006, Africa needs more help, not less, activists said. A preliminary World Bank study released last week estimated that up to 105 million more people, including 30 million in Africa, could drop below the poverty line because of the rising food prices. Max Lawson, a policy adviser to Oxfam, a British advocacy group, said the summit was arguably the most important G8 gathering in a decade. "The world, rich and poor countries both, is facing multiple crises - serious, serious economic problems," Lawsaon said. But it is the poor people who suffer the most because of the rising food prices. Greenhouse Gas Global warming will be the focus at an expanded G8 meeting tomorrow. But deep divisions within the G8, as well as between rich and poor nations, have raised doubts about the chances of progress beyond last year's summit, where the G8 agreed to "seriously consider" a global goal of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The European Union and green groups are piling pressure on a reluctant US to agree to a target to halve global greenhouse gas emissions by the mid-century and back the need for 2020 targets for rich countries as well. Agencies |
