Live 8 organiser Bob Geldof, heading to Scotland on Tuesday, said it would be ”grotesquely irresponsible” for politicians to back down from promises of aid for impoverished Africa.
Geldof has called for one million people to take part in a ”long walk to justice” on Wednesday to pressure Group of Eight (G8) leaders meeting this week in nearby Gleneagles.
The G8 summit begins on Wednesday.
But Britain’s Treasury chief Gordon Brown warned that anti-poverty campaigners may be disappointed when G8 leaders announce their package of aid to Africa.
Brown, a driving force behind British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s efforts to make aid to Africa a G8 priority, said helping the continent is the ”greatest moral crusade of our time”, and has pushed for debt relief, free trade and a doubling of international aid.
But he told the BBC on Tuesday that he has warned campaigners that the G8 is unlikely to meet their expectations.
”I know that … you will tell us we’ve got to do more. I know that what you will say is that what we can achieve is perhaps not good enough,” Brown said he told campaigners. ”But we have got to bring the whole of the world together. What Britain says is one thing; what we can persuade the rest of the world to do together is what we will get as the outcome of Gleneagles.”
Geldof, who left London by train with representatives from anti-poverty campaigns in France, Georgia, Ghana, Mali, Sierra Leone and Britain, said he is ”not prepared to be disappointed”.
He insisted the British government should not be ”lowering the bar” of what the G8 should achieve.
”I don’t think that is an option. I don’t think the chancellor should try lowering the bar at this stage,” Geldof said. ”We have come for victory. It has to happen now. Not to do it now would be grotesquely irresponsible. It is unacceptable for politicians to say ‘prepare to be disappointed’.”
Rock stars, including Annie Lennox and the band Texas, will take part in a concert on Wednesday called Edinburgh 50 000: The Final Push. Organisers say the figure refers to the number of people who will die that day alone from extreme poverty.
Blair’s Commission for Africa report calls for debt relief, fair trade and an extra €20,7-billion a year in international aid for the continent by 2010, and then a further €20,7-billion annually up to 2015.
The report also calls on Africans to improve governance, resolve conflicts and stamp out corruption.
Oxfam’s head of advocacy, Jo Leadbeater, warned that 2010 would be ”five years too late for the 55-million children who will die waiting for the world’s richest leaders to deliver on their promises”.
Anti-G8 summit
Meanwhile, reports Serge Daniel, hundreds of activists will gather in the Malian town of Fana on Wednesday for an anti-G8 summit to remind the world’s leading industrialised nations of what’s at stake in their negotiations to end poverty in Africa.
Like the African Social Forum, the Southern Jubilee and the annual World Social Forum that occurs prior to the gathering of the economic elite in Davos, Switzerland, this fourth Forum of the People aims to focus attention on the world’s poorest countries and their own solutions for their social and economic travails.
”We want to contribute to reinforcing citizen power and strength, and put governments on notice both in Africa and in rich countries for their responsibilities,” said Barry Aminata Toure, president of the organising coalition of African Alternatives to Debt for Development.
This year’s forum in Fana, expected to attract about 2 000 people from around the continent as well as Europe and the Americas, will run parallel to the G8 summit in Gleneagles.
The choice of Fana, about 120km east of Bamako, was a strategic one as the city is a producer of cotton, one of the primary exports from Africa that suffers under the weight of unfair trade subsidies.
”We chose Fana as a symbol of a place to take a stand to say no to savage privatization of our cotton industry and no to the deterioration of the terms of exchange,” Toure said.
Subsidies and an unfair playing field have robbed Africa of about €600-million in revenue from cotton in the five-year period from 1998 to 2003, Toure said.
Over the four-day summit, participants will join workshops on themes including debt, the dangers of genetically modified organisms for African agriculture and the continent’s progress towards anti-poverty Millennium Development Goals established by the United Nations.
Representatives from development groups as well as peasant-advocacy organisations will also push for greater focus on the problems in Africa’s rural zones, where poverty, illiteracy and exposure to epidemic disease are rampant.
”It is not enough to announce the annulation of part of the debt or to say that Africa is a priority,” said Malian lawyer Ibrahim Maiga, a supporter of the Fana forum.
”There must be concrete actions taken to line Africa up with a proper fate, not a grand show that will allow world leaders to sleep at night with a clear conscience.” — Sapa-AP, Sapa-AFP