A year ago in Genoa, Italy, the leaders of eight nations known as the G-8 set up a task force to develop a concrete plan of action to support "Nepad" - the Africa-generated new partnership for African development.
The G-8 is made up of the seven richest industrialized countries in the world plus Russia. They account for almost two-thirds of the world's annual income and have decisive influence at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). This year's G-8 Economic Summit, meeting in Kananaskis, a small resort town near Calgary, Alberta in the Canadian Rockies, was to have focused primarily on how to lift Africa out of poverty.
But hopes for much specificity have been ratcheted down as the Summit gets underway. In New York Tuesday, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned against "unrealistic expectations" and "magic success" at the summit. Still, Annan said he hopes "that this partnership would lead to a changed economic environment on the continent."
Africa is the world's most impoverished continent. With aid frequently tied to conditionalities that critics say bore little relationship to African realities, it often seemed that "assistance" hurt more than helped, and in the end was used as an excuse not to even try and help. By 1998, US$18bn worth of global loans and grants that went to Africa in 1990 had dropped to US$11bn. This year the total will be even lower.
But the war on terror and continuing Middle East tensions have combined to overshadow the proposed Africa agenda in Kananaskis. Just before leaving for the Canadian town, President Bush announced his controversial Middle East peace plan and is pressing for support among G-8 leaders.
Ironically, the global war on terror may have as much to do with keeping Africa from being ignored in Kananaskis as the continent's pressing development concerns. Any security discussion has to include Africa, where al-Qaeda launched its first major attacks against the United States when its operatives blew up embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The link between underdevelopment, alienation and insecurity is better understood, or at least more visible, in the post-September 11 world.
In the months leading up to the Summit there has been general support for Nepad. "Africa is getting poorer and falling further behind," said Baroness Valerie Amos, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister for Africa, in a speech last month. "It represents our greatest challenge as a world community and that is why at last year's G-8 Summit in Genoa, G-8 leaders committed to the development of a G-8 Africa Action Plan to support the work of NEPAD."
This G-8 "action plan" does not mean that a separate G-8 strategy is going to be placed on the table in Kananasakis, said a senior Bush administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The official very carefully described the "plan" as a "response" to Nepad. "The Genoa communique specifically says that the G-8 countries will appoint special Africa representatives who will respond to the Nepad plan...[they] have come up with a plan that's their response to the Nepad plan. It's not a separate plan as such."
Although the G-8 has been expressing support for Nepad, how this will translate into concrete action remained uncertain as the Summit opened. "What we want," the senior official said, "is realizable goals, achievable goals and goals that will actually have an impact on people's lives. And so [our response to Nepad] going into the G-8...is to say, let's not say something that we're not going to actually do."
Most of what Africa is going to get has already been put on the table. President Bush has announced several new initiatives as well as a plan to visit the continent next year. The World Bank said Tuesday that it is loosening loan restrictions. African nations have committed to fighting corruption and to greater transparency. The Bank is also making new efforts aimed at increasing primary school enrollment.
The tough issues of debt relief, subsidies and tariff barriers are not in the discussion. G-8 nations are nowhere near making the kind of financial commitment to the HIV/Aids fight that Kofi Annan has asked for. Nor is that commitment expected to emerge from the Kananaskis summit.
What seems to have changed is the tone of discussion. Africa has an unprecedented place on the agenda. Thursday, after a full day of meetings with Annan and four African leaders - South African President Thabo Mbeki and the Presidents of Egypt, Senegal and Algeria - the G-8 response to Nepad will be unveiled. A political statement, which reiterates the Bush administration's linkage of good governance to investment and assistance, will accompany the response to Nepad.
Nepad, considered the first African-led plan to solve Africa's problems, needs the cash of rich nations to succeed. The plan, which aims to halve the number of people living in extreme poverty, must achieve economic growth above 7 percent annually for the next 15 years - double the continent's average growth in 2001.
Nepad proposes foreign investment in Africa of US$64bn annually. No one thinks that is likely. "Will there be a cheque written for 64 billion dollars on June 27? No, there will not, and African leaders understand that," a senior Canadian official told reporters Tuesday.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
What the G-8 leaders hope to do is to formally shake hands on a deal with Africa: a greater and more targeted flow of money to the continent in exchange for African efforts to govern better.
"What we've proposed is a mutual accountability, whereby we will reward with increased assistance countries that are putting in place the kinds of policies that we know will achieve sustained economic development...in particular, promoting economic freedom and entrepreneurship," said Deputy National Security Advisor for Economic Affairs, Gary Edson, speaking to reporters just before President Bush's arrival in Canada Tuesday.
Nepad is the product that has emerged from the African end of the bargain. The African plan includes a "peer review group" to check the performance of individual countries.
Critical voices will be muted at the Summit, despite some planned protests that will be kept miles away from the conference site. Part of the bargain, born of desperate need, is that African leaders will gratefully accept whatever the G-8 finally agrees to commit.
