‘All they ever do is make promises to Africa’

While the world’s richest and most powerful meet in the snowcapped mountains of Switzerland to lament Africa’s dead and starving, the people here advise them to save their breath — they’ve heard it all before.

”All they ever do is make promises to Africa, but never apply them,” said Lucy Munyololo, a fish seller in Kinshasa’s teeming central market, where recent rains have turned the street’s pond-sized potholes into fetid lakes. ”Don’t they know we have no food, and we’re suffering?”

In fact, the world leaders, millionaires and activists at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland are well aware. During a keynote address to the conference on Wednesday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair read off a bleak litany of African statistics: 300-million Africans lack safe drinking water; 3 000 African children under the age of five day every day from Malaria; 6 000 Africans die daily of Aids.

”We know all of this. So what can be done?” said Blair, who on Thursday joined music star and anti-poverty activist Bono, former US president Bill Clinton, Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates and the presidents of South Africa and Nigeria on a special panel to discuss long-sought solutions to the Africa’s nightmares.

In places like the DRC and Sudan, entire populations have fled their homes from regional fighting, only to wither away by the thousands in the wilds. In the DRC alone, 3,8-million people have died in the past five years from war-induced starvation and disease, according to aid groups.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo told the Davos panel the situation in Africa must be seen worldwide as an emergency needing urgent global assistance.

”There is need for a sea-movement of assistance to Nigeria and Africa,” said Obasanjo.

”We need more kind hearts like those of president Clinton, Bill Gates and Bono in government, civil society and the private sector.”

The annual meeting in Davos brings together 2 500 of the world’s leading business, intellectual, political and social leaders.

Business participants pay 14 000 Swiss francs ($12 000) each to rub shoulders during five days of seminars on how to solve the world’s prosperity gap, the need to commit resources to fight HIV/Aids, and the threat of terrorism.

Meanwhile, residents in the continent’s most devastated countries, where dozens die every hour from easily avoidable maladies, say they’re happy to be remembered, but tired of the broken promises.

”It should not be just talk, talk, but do, do something,” said Charles Davies, a newspaper editor in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Sierra Leone is the poorest, most miserable nation in the world, according to the United Nations Development Programme.

”Cancel the debts, pump more money to developing countries and follow them up to ensure that the moneys are properly spent,” Davies said.

Others were hopeful that Davos could bring some real changes.

”The call and pledge to assist Africa is a genuine one,” said Beyan Kota, president of the Christian Association of the Blind in Monrovia, Liberia, where nearly 14 years of continuous warfare has gutted all industry and left the country with an unemployment rate of 70-75%.

”This is the only way the issue of Aids and poverty on the continent can be addressed,” he said.

However, to the Congolese, the idea of a room full of rich men discussing their future sounds all-too familiar. Since its days as a Belgian colony, many a world leader has grown wealthy from the DRC’s abundance of gold, copper and other minerals.

A steely cynicism is what remains.

”These people become rich because they steal our minerals and take the money out of the country,” said Edmond Ndjovu (32) a nurse, as he jostled among sweaty bodies waiting for a taxi bus in Kinshasa’s market. ”As an African, all I want is for their help to bring peace so we can all find jobs.”