Article

THE GLENEAGLES IN CONTEXT
A SUMMIT FOR AFRICA : The G8 Leaders Deliberate

In early 2004 Mr Blair's government had established the Africa Commission which had, among other important things, called for no less than total debt cancellation for the poor nations of Africa. He had set up a Commission for Africa in February 2004 which produced a report a year later, designed to produce ammunition for the Summit, and inform its decisions. Sir Bob Geldof, the Irish pop-singer who had been one of the main influences on Blair's decision to set up the commission in the first place, set up a series of pop concerts in an echo of the Live Aid concert that had sensitised so many to the Ethiopian famine twenty years before. He and other campaigners to "Make Poverty History" were also involved in marches in Gleneagles and Edinburgh. Although the latter saw over 200,000 people, it was not the million that had been hoped for.

The concerts, baptised 'Live 8,' were held at a number of important venues (London, Paris, Berlin, Johannesburg, Tokyo) and mobilised some of the cream (if sometimes ageing) of international pop talent to drum up enthusiasm to pressurise the G8 to take more radical decisions than they might otherwise have wished. There is no evidence that the razzmatazz made very much difference, however, as most of the important decisions - on increasing aid and on relieving debt - were effectively made prior to the summit, in any case. In the case of debt, the important decision (cancellation of multi-     lateral debt for the poorest countries in the HIPC framework) was taken by a group of G8 finance ministers in London early in June, which went without alteration into the Gleneagles decisions. Also, a major step towards stitching together figures that could be presented as a doubling of aid came from a meeting of EU development ministers in mid-May.  In Africa, too, they were not unmindful that the organisers of Live 8 concerts were so intent on re-creating the experiences of twenty years ago that they had, somehow, forgotten that there are now many more African musicians of world standing who could easily have been deployed in support of such a venture. At the last minute a few of them, such as Angelique Kidjo and Baba Maal, were mobilised into an untelevised concert for 5,000 'world music' enthusiasts at the Eden Project greenhouses in remote Cornwall. Only the perennial Senegalese maestro, Youssouf Ndour, was deployed to play at three concerts at once to hold the lonely banner of the African musician. The whole affair highlighted the north-centred nature of much of this debate, a sentiment strongly felt in some quarters, despite the inclusion of Africans in Blair's Commission and the bandying about of words like 'partnership and 'ownership.'

Africans have for the most part been spectators in this, albeit taking a fairly philosophical position that there might well be something in it for them. For the most part they could not easily disagree with much of the conclusions of the Commission, even if there was a widely held view that there was nothing really new in it, and even though it was possible to admire how all the various arguments on aid, debt and trade were stylishly and seamlessly knitted together.

The African Union Summit in Syrte did commend the African Commission Report in a special resolution, perhaps as a diplomatic homage to the efforts of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to put Africa's problems on the map through the report. At the same time, however, they "emphasised" that the report was "supplemental to previous initiatives, including NEPAD, the Strategic Plan of the AU and the G8 Kananaskis Africa Action Plan. In another resolution on the G8 Follow-up, the AU leaders stressed implementation and evaluation of Kananaskis without mentioning the Africa Commission, whose own follow-up mechanism is a modest one.

Many of the other G8 members, especially the Canadians, felt that it was not Tony Blair who invented G8 concern for Africa, and  that his Commission should be put in the perspective of ongoing actions. Despite all the consultations related to the Commission for Africa Report, in Africa and Europe (although precious few trans-Atlantic), the whole business was perceived in many countries as taking place inside a "British bubble" produced by the now notorious spin doctors of 10 Downing Street, and the 110 per cent engagement of the BBC, that had less international impact than was imagined from a London vantage point. Many within the bubble were put in the position of even being embarrassed to express any misgivings about what was so patently a good cause wrapped in moral virtue.   [ back ]

read more >>