President Thabo Mbeki says he is inspired by United States President George Bush’s determination to help ensure that the upcoming Gleneagles Group of Eight (G8) summit in Scotland will produce a positive outcome for Africa.
In his regular internet column on Friday, ANC Today, the president devoted his attention to Africa’s liberation from colonialism and the success of forging a collective blueprint for its development and growth, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad).
Noting that the G8 highly industrialised countries have adopted their own programme of action to provide support for Nepad — the G8 Africa Action Plan (AAP) — Mbeki said it is ”critically important” that everybody concerned should work together ”very closely and seriously” between now and July to ensure that Gleneagles produces practical results expected by the people of Africa.
Mbeki, who met with Bush on Wednesday in Washington, said that in a joint statement following discussions with the US president, the parties said that they ”reaffirm our joint vision for African economic growth and development, a vision built around the principles of good governance and accountability established both in the New Partnership for Africa’s Development and the 2002 Monterrey Consensus.
”We also look forward to a positive outcome of the upcoming G8 summit, reaffirming the G8’s commitment to support Africa’s efforts to address the challenges and realise the opportunities the continent faces.”
The president noted that the 2004 G8 summit meeting in Georgia in the US undertook a broad review of the Africa-G8 process to ensure that an implementation report to be tabled at the 2005 G8 summit will contain all the salient points highlighted by both Nepad and the G8 AAP.
He noted that these included debt relief and increased financing for development; increased access for African products into the markets of developed countries; diversifying the African economies; improving the governance capacities of African governments; implementing specific projects in the identified priority areas, including agriculture and infrastructure; and enhancing Africa’s capacity to promote peace and stability on the continent.
”Quite correctly, therefore, the Africa commission established by United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair focused on these matters. It gave specific indications of the resources that are required to move these forward.
”From the very beginning of the G8-Africa partnership, the partners accepted the principle of mutual accountability. Accordingly, both partners, and not just Africa, will have to report at Gleneagles as to what they have done to implement the agreed programmes,” said Mbeki. — I-Net Bridge