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

Before the end of 2005, in late November, two summits which both affect Africa greatly had been scheduled - that of the Commonwealth in Malta and the Franco-African summit scheduled just after in Bamako, Mali. Neither the Commonwealth nor la Francophonie (whose own summit  in 2004 was in Burkina Faso) have been directly involved in the process, although both have G8 and other rich-country members, and both will be useful sounding boards on how much difference Africa Commission and G8 activity has made. The Africa Commission, in any case, wound up on July 31, 2005, while other institutions continue and these are the ones that will have to be worked with.

This is why attention will also have to be paid to planned summits of the European Union which Tony Blair chairs until the end of December 2005, although these may be preoccupied with the internal crisis through which the EU is passing as a result of the rejection of the new European Constitution by France and the Netherlands.  Nonetheless, the EU is an institution with real power to make a difference, both in the field of aid, where it is a major donor, and in trade, as well as in the crucial area of farm subsidies, where Gleneagles was vague and still plugging, a trifle dogmatically, the virtues of more free trade as the best thing for developing countries. While making the right noises about building "capacity to trade," it left the essential "ambitious and balanced" decisions to the next ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation within the framework  of the Doha Development Round (DDR) of trade talks in Hong Kong in December 2005. Only then was a better perspective, on what Gleneagles has really achieved expected to emerge. For, the proof of this particular pudding, cooked in Scotland and matured in New York, Brussels and Hong Kong is going to be very much in the eating.

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