The world’s richest nations need to show greater commitment towards Africa, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Thursday, amid concern that pledges on aid and development were falling short.
Ahead of the forthcoming Group of Eight (G8) summit in Germany, Blair said it was still possible to effect ”real transformation change” in the years ahead, but only if all countries follow through.
”Next week at the G8 summit leaders will show whether having put Africa at the top of the global agenda, we have the perseverance and vision to see it through,” he said in a wide-ranging speech in Johannesburg.
Blair — widely credited for his leadership on Africa during his 10 years in power — oversaw the 2005 G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, that secured pledges for a substantial increase in aid to Africa and debt relief by 2010.
Progress had been made, he said, notably in granting $38-billion in debt relief to 18 African nations.
But more work was still needed in areas like HIV/Aids-prevention programmes and universal primary school education.
A new dynamic was needed from rich countries towards Africa using partnership rather than aid alone, he told an audience of academics, students and business leaders.
That might enable them to meet the ”landmark” Gleneagles commitments and United Nations Millennium Development Goals, which set eight targets for improving the lot of the world’s poorest countries, he added.
At the 2005 G8 summit, the group of eight industrialised nations pledged to double levels of aid for Africa by the end of the decade, but watchdogs have said that donor levels have not increased to date.
Cape Town Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, president of the African Monitor group, said earlier this week that aid had remained static to Africa since 2005 and criticised wealthy nations for not fulfilling their promises.
Blair said that African nations also needed to deliver their side of the bargain by implementing democracy, good governance and rooting out corruption, as well as holding each other to account.
In particular, he praised Southern African states and South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki for their efforts to bring together the government in Zimbabwe and opposition groups.
”The world is waiting, wanting to re-engage with a reforming Zimbabwe government,” he said, without naming Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, who is an arch-critic of Blair.
”The international community must be prepared to help rebuild the shattered country.”
On Africa as a whole, Blair said: ”We have to stay with it for the long haul, commit and recommit. Never let it be said we are not trying, even if it cannot always be said we are succeeding.
”We now have a broad political consensus for Africa in the United Kingdom. Excellent. We need the same in the EU. We need each G8 to be bolder than the last.
”If we do this and Africa responds as an equal partner, we will have set a strategic goal that in time we will achieve …
”But if we give up, we will lose the chance in this continent, rich as it is though its people are poor, for our values to take root. It would be a calamitous misjudgement.”
Blair is on his last major foreign tour before leaving office on June 27 and arrived in South Africa on Thursday morning from Sierra Leone. Before that he visited Libya.
Setting his trip in context, he argued that foreign intervention such as Britain’s mission in 2000 to help end Sierra Leone’s civil war could work, but that Africa still needed more international support.
It was ”unacceptable” the African Union struggled for finances, salaries and equipment in peacekeeping operations, he added.
And he repeated his pledge to secure UN funding for future AU deployments and a rapid reaction force.
”No conflict demonstrates the need for action more than Darfur,” he said, reiterating his support for tougher sanctions on Khartoum. — Sapa-AFP