By Larry Elliott
GuardianJune 28, 2002
Aid agencies rounded furiously on the world's richest countries last night, describing the G8's much-vaunted rescue plan for Africa as a squandered opportunity and "recycled peanuts".
Tony Blair hailed yesterday's action plan from the west's leading industrial nations as a "real significant step forward", but the blueprint was strongly criticised for failing to provide the Marshall plan for Africa the prime minister promised at last year's summit in Genoa.
African leaders invited to the G8 gathering in Kananaskis, Canada, expressed deep disappointment that the plan did nothing to open western markets, cancel debts of the poorest countries or provide the financial aid needed to meet the UN's targets for tackling global poverty by 2015.
G8 sources claimed progress had been made on peacekeeping, resolving conflicts and eradicating polio. Half the $12bn (£7.86bn) a year already pledged by rich countries for aid budgets will be committed to Africa, while the fund to pay off the debts of the most impoverished states will be increased by $1bn.
But the outcome was a blow for Mr Blair, who had been pressing the G8 to come up with a more ambitious set of proposals, but was thwarted by the US and Japan.
Last night he was putting on a brave face: "Today's document will send out a signal of hope to Africa. We have agreed to help Africa to help itself. This will be remembered as the summit that devoted the lion's share of its attention to Africa."
He said the $6bn a year was a "significant uplift in aid", although Africa would have to make good its side of the bargain by rooting out corruption.
The World Bank estimates between $40bn and $60bn a year is needed to get Africa on target to meet UN development goals. The prime minister's official spokesman said: "We have never said that this was the end of the road. It was always going to be a first step."
But aid agencies were scathing about the plan, attacking it for its lack of new money and comparing it unfavourably with the generosity of the US in the original Marshall plan, which provided 1% of US GDP for five years to rebuild Europe after the second world war.
Oxfam said the summit had "failed to deliver the much-hyped breakthrough for Africa. A year of promises and grand intentions came to nothing as the leaders of the industrialised world agreed to an action plan lacking two key elements - action and a plan."
Phil Twyford, Oxfam's international advocacy director, said: "We're extremely disappointed by this wasted opportunity. They're offering peanuts to Africa - and recycled peanuts at that."
Bob Geldof, the debt campaigner and Live Aid organiser, said: "It looked fairly promising until a month ago. But in the past two weeks it has all unravelled into this meaningless conference."
As the G8 summit ended yesterday, the UN development programme reported that on current trends only 10 of the 45 countries in sub-Saharan Africa were on course to meet the 2015 targets, which include halving poverty, universal primary education and cutting infant mortality by two-thirds.
Four African presidents - Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Olesegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Alger ia and Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal - had been invited to the summit as representatives of Nepad, the partnership for African development set up in the hope that a commitment to better governance and tackling corruption would lead to more aid.
Nepad sources described the text as "absolutely empty". The questions of investment in Africa's infrastructure, debt cancellation and trade access had not been mentioned.
G8 sources said that by next year a plan would be in place to develop Africa's own peacekeeping force, with special focus on Sudan, Angola and Congo.
While welcoming the G8 focus on Africa, Henry Northover of Cafod, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, said: "Hopes for a potential new aid relationship between the richest countries and Africa have been squandered." Cafod said the "inaction" plan was striking only for its vacuousness and contained no concrete actions of timetabled commitments.
Andrew Pendleton of Christian Aid said: "Meeting in their Rocky Mountain retreat in Canada, the G8 leaders have listened to Africa and that's a step in the right direction.
"But the G8 had the opportunity to write their names indelibly into the history books on Africa; they've only managed to pencil a few notes in the margin."
Responding to Oxfam's comments a British official said last night: "Pressure groups exist to put pressure on government and it's right that they do so, but to describe the outcome of a summit that has delivered an extra $6bn and more for Africa as peanuts is absurd: $6bn will buy you a lot of peanuts and much more besides."
What African leaders were hoping for
Trade
· Cuts in the high duties that African exports face in western markets
· Pledges by rich countries to cut vast agricultural subsidies that bankrupt vulnerable African farmers by pushing down world commodity prices
Debt relief
· $15bn-20bn extra debt relief for the loan repayments draining African budgets and to make up for the fall in export prices. Half the countries to have been through the west's debt relief programme are still spending more on repayments to their creditors than on public health
Aid and investment
·$35bn in aid and investment. The UN estimates that it would cost $25bn-35bn to get Africa on track to meet its internationally agreed anti-poverty goals
And what they got
Trade
· Nothing. Position worse than a year ago as both Canada and the US plan to pump more money into farming subsidies
Debt
· $1bn in extra debt relief to make up for falling commodity prices
Aid
· $6bn of EU and US aid to be earmarked for Africa by 2006
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