The African Union inaugurated a two-day summit on Monday in Libya during which it is expected to hammer out a continental position on economic relations with the developed countries ahead of this week’s G8 meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland.
About 50 African leaders were gathered in the coastal city of Sirte for the event.
Also attending were United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and Arab League head Amr Moussa as well as officials from a host of countries across the globe.
Some observers have suggested that the summit will seek further debt relief from industrialised nations ahead of the G8 meeting that begins on Wednesday.
African countries are also seeking additional seats on an expanded Security Council — an issue which will be discussed by the African leaders.
Also on the UN front, the meeting’s agenda includes discussion of reform of the multilateral body and continental progress towards achieving its Millennium Development Goals.
On the continental front, conflicts wracking several African nations are slated to be talked about as is the union’s initiative for development, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), and public health issues.
Meeting after meeting …
”The fact that we still have underdevelopment in Africa shows that a lot still remains to be done, both by Africa and by our partners, and African participation in the G8 summit will be the occasion to get this message across”, said Rene N’Guettia Kouassi, the AU’s director of economic affairs.
”It’s true there is meeting after meeting, commitment after commitment, but it never has any effect, any impact; promises are made but not kept,” he said, adding: ”If they [the rich nations] continue making promises they don’t keep, Africa will lose hope.”
African countries are trying to make the most of a rare spell as the centre of world attention in the run-up to the meeting, a summit that will also be attended by a handful of African leaders, diplomats said.
South African President Thabo Mbeki has been invited to the summit and several other African leaders, among them Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, are also expected to attend.
Africa is the only continent to have become poorer over the past 25 years, according to the United Nations, with about 300-million people living on less than one dollar a day.
At a summit in June in the Nigerian capital Abuja, six African heads of state and representatives from some 10 other countries agreed to ask the world economic powers to extend the debt relief package announced in June to all other African nations.
”OK: there is no formal link between the two summits but Africa is trying to make that connection”, said a western diplomat on the sidelines of the Sirte summit.
The same source said the African Union heads of state are expected to say at the summit that ”they are very grateful to [British Prime Minister] Tony Blair [over the issue of debt relief]”.
It was Blair who is largely credited with having pushed through a G8 debt relief package worth about $40-billion in favour of the world’s most impoverished countries, most of them in Africa, in June.
The British prime minister, who also hopes to double aid to the continent, to $50-billion, by 2010 wants the Gleneagles summit, which runs from July 6 to 8, to be a pivotal moment in the fight to alleviate African poverty.
”The G8 has to understand that a developed Africa can serve its own interests, contributes to world peace; means a larger market for western industrialists and limits the HIV epidemic”, said Kouassi, pointing out that Western powers ”do not always play fair” and accusing them of continuing outdated policies worthy of another century, notably in the field of cotton.
African nations accuse developed countries, and notably the United States, of contravening World Trade Organisation rules and continuing subventions to their own cotton producers, a policy that handicaps African producers.
”We’re tired of the image of Africa as a beggar. Development aid is the way for the West to give back to Africa what it took from us,” said Elisabeth Tankeu, AU Comissionner for Trade and Industry.
”African youth is desperate and has nothing to hope for. Our G8 partners should help us manage and develop our resources rather than pushing us towards despair”, she argued, citing the risk that despair could prove a breeding ground for anti-western extremism.
Mugabe heads for Sirte
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe left for Libya on Sunday, state radio said.
He was accompanied by his wife Grace, who will be attending a meeting of African first ladies on the sidelines of the main summit.
Mugabe has embarked on a controversial campaign to demolish unauthorised housing structures and backyard shacks in what he called a ”clean-up operation”.
The operation has drawn widespread criticism with Western powers calling on Africa, particularly Zimbabwe’s neighbours to act to stop the blitz which many say has violated the rights of the poor.
Mugabe’s departure came as the state media announced the arrival in the country of a special AU rights investigator, Bahame Tom Nyanduga.
Nyanduga’s trip was described as ”unprocedural and out of step with protocol” because Zimbabwe was informed about it a day before he was due to land in Harare.
The Sunday Mail quoted an unnamed source saying the government
only knew of the trip when Nyanduga was already ”airborne”. – Sapa-AFP