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Africa: Africa Aid Should be Tied to Needs, Goals, Says U.S. Official
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INTERVIEW
7 July 2005
Posted to the web 7 July 2005
Washington, DC
However distracted by Thursday's bombings in London, the G8 meetings in Gleneagles, Scotland continued with consideration of global climate change and a working lunch that South African President Thabo Mbeki attended. Friday is designated for an Africa focus, with leaders of the eight developed countries that compose the G8 meeting together in the morning, followed by a working lunch between the G8 and the African leaders who were invited to the summit.
The summit itself has been the culmination of lengthy preparatory meetings, with policy statements hammered out in advance by "sherpas" - the representatives of the G8 leaders, whose name is taken from the Himalayan guides who escort climbers to the summits of mountains, and whose aides are dubbed "sous-sherpas." Underscoring the sherpa's central role, musician and anti-poverty campaigner Bono met with the group in London for 30 minutes while there for the Live 8 concert, making what German sherpa Bernd Pfaffenbach called a "very positive" impression.
Leaders of several African countries were invited to Friday's working lunch: the four founders of the New Partnership for African Development (Nepad) - the heads of South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal and Algeria; the leaders of Ethiopia and Tanzania, who are the Africans serving on the Commission for African Development (the "Blair Commission") formed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair; the president of the African Union; and the president of Ghana, which was one of the first countries to submit itself to the African Union's "peer review" process, designed to evaluate compliance with the goals and standards of good governance and socio-economic management. Also invited to the lunch were the United Nations Secretary General and the president of the World Bank.
Before leaving for Gleneagles, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Constance Barry Newman, spoke with AllAfrica's Tamela Hultman about the Africa focus of this year's G8. Newman, who was in charge of Africa for USAID before assuming her current post, has attended previous G8 summits and worked closely with a wide range of efforts and initiatives leading up to the summit. She has participated in intensive sessions with African and G8 officials and sherpas.
Newman says she is hopeful about Africa's future, partly because African leaders are playing increasingly responsible roles and partly because the G8 process and the attention surrounding it have raised Africa's international profile. She also says that that African civil society will be a determining factor in raising Africa from poverty. Here are excerpts from the conversation:
What has been the United States' approach to this year's G8, with its emphasis on African development?
What's important to understand is that Africa is important to the United States and has been recognized as being important to the United States since the beginning of this administration. I think what needs to be communicated is that the developed countries and the G8 need to take on a different role than in the past - one of real partnership with Africa.
African leaders are serious themselves about being held accountable for what goes on on the continent, whether it's peace and security, whether it's famine, whether it's improving trade. We should all expect a stronger statement in recognition of the shifting role of the G8 to that of a partner with the Africans - and an honest recognition of what it is that each partner has contributed and is willing to contribute in the future, in the context of what the Africans want and need.
What should be appreciated is that Africa is a real player in the world now. There is a growing recognition on the part of the G8 that nothing gets through the United Nations without a major role played by Africa - that peace and security, particularly on the African continent doesn't get addressed without Africans.
So I think that one of the good outcomes and one of the reasons why the UK has put Africa high up on the list for the summit - and why Africa has been on the summit agenda now since 1990 - is more hope in the role that Africa can play in the future.
The New Partnership for African Development (Nepad) that grew out of the formation of the African Union is getting its "peer review" process underway. Do you think this scheme to have countries submit themselves to evaluation by their peers is something really substantive?
I think it is. I think the African leaders are serious about it. I don't think it's easy. I think it's tough. And they really can't turn to examples of where it has taken place in the world, because it hasn't really. The OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, an alliance of developed countries) has certain reviews of countries' development activity, but there's really no process out there that has peers reviewing the extent to which you're running a democratic government, the extent to which you have an environment that is friendly to the development of businesses - so it may turn out that the peer review process will be a model for the rest of the world. And I don't think people ever looked at it that way.
But it's not easy. And what's going to be the proof of the pudding is when a peer review process is over, and there's an analysis that is critical. I'm not clear that the process of handling the results is quite understood. And that, too, is difficult. Let's say that it's a critical review. A government probably would prefer a quiet whispering of the criticism - but then it's not a transparent process.
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