The day after the powerful Group of Eight (G8) nations pledged to ”fully commit themselves” to African development, African finance ministers on Monday called for increased, better and more coherent assistance to help Africa rise above grinding poverty. In a statement calling for ”swift action,” the ministers pointed to the continent-wide drop in economic growth from 4,3% in 2001 to 3,2% last year, the staggering increase in the number of HIV/Aids victims to 29,4-million and the 380-million Africans — half the population of sub-Saharan Africa — who live in abject poverty.
On Sunday in the French spa of Evian on the opening day of their summit, the G8 leaders said they ”fully commit themselves to strengthening their partnership with Africa”, and called for new measures to support good governance, attract investment and build an African military force to keep budding conflicts under control.
But the African ministers said if current trends continue, Africa will not meet its millennium development goals of cutting poverty in half by 2015.
”Reversing this trend will require a new and energised relationship between Africa and its partners based on trust and a shared responsibility for development effectiveness… and creating this new relationship requires urgent, co-ordinated and sustained action,” the statement said.
The goals provide internationally agreed benchmarks for monitoring development outcomes as well as acceptance of mutual responsibility for meeting them on the part of both recipients and donors.
The African ministers voiced particular concern over the amount of development aid availed; the quality of that aid and the policy coherence of the donor nations. And they demanded that the efficiency of development partners in meeting their side of the bargain ”feature as important components in joint reviews of development effectiveness”.
In other words, Africans agree to be judged on how well they use aid, but they want donors to undergo similar scrutiny. The ministers pointed to agricultural subsidies and restrictive tariffs as examples of incoherent donor policy.
Why resuscitate the cotton industries in Mali and Kenya so they can provide fibre for African textile industries hoping to profit from the US African Growth and Opportunities Act and, at the same time, grant large subsidies to US cotton growers that effectively price African cotton out of the American market?
Ministers also pointed out that while donors emphasise the need to diversify commodity-based African economies to add value through processing, protective tariffs just frustrate such efforts.
”This problem is further compounded by sharp declines in commodity prices,” they said, calling on countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to ”front-load the benefits of trade liberalisation for the poorest countries by providing immediate duty-free and quota-free market access and to develop an appropriate price stabilisation mechanism”. Meeting first under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the ministers move on to the annual meeting of the African Development Bank on Tuesday. – Sapa-AP