Political leaders attending the World Economic Forum’s Africa summit on Wednesday warned that global powers, such as the United States, would ignore Africa to their own detriment.
Speaking at the opening plenary of the three-day summit in Durban, Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano claimed the United States was a weak country, if it chose not help uplift poorer nations.
That country, the mega-power of the world, would not be sustainable if their wealth and political wisdom served them alone.
”If they had to come and put their big feet on top of those who are at this side (Africa) and just watch them, in the end they will have no support in the world.
”The only way for the USA to be of big value is to accept equality, and to accept equity.”
Partnership between rich nations, such as the United States, and the poor was essential. Chissano said the US-led war in Iraq had led to immediate consequences for Africa, as the ”real problems” of the world had been neglected.
”I believe that there are enough resources to rebuild Iraq but also to increase the support to the programmes of Africa, so that there is a balance,” he said.
More than 600 delegates from some 40 countries are meeting in Durban for the WEF’s annual summit on Africa. This year the meeting will, again, focus on the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), the continent’s economic recovery
plan.
Hilde Frafjord Johnson, Norway’s Minister of International Development, said a situation had to be avoided in which assistance that would have been directed to Africa was sent, rather, to Iraq.
”If we look at all the global challenges we have, the greatest global challenge is poverty, it is poverty eradication. There is no way that terrorism or any other international event will change that fact, because it is a fact.”
There was now a major risk that Africa may be left alone as ”new Iraqs” and other international events held the world’s attention.
”FDI (foreign direct investment) flows are going in the wrong direction, aid flows are going in the wrong direction, and the risk now is that something that should go to Africa… is transferred to Iraq.
”These things we have to avoid,” she said.
Ghana-based Ashanti Goldfields group CEO Sam Jonah warned that Africa’s poor faced even more marginalisation as the growth in the world economy slowed.
He added that it was a frightening thought that a European or a Japanese cow was better looked after than 80% of Africans. The European Union spent $1-billion a day on agricultural subsidies, which translated into $2 a day for every cow in Europe.
Japan spent about $7 on each cow in that country, Jonah said.
The summit ends on Friday. – Sapa