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Susan E. Rice in YALE GLOBAL ONLINE

"Africa After the Music Stops"

An extract from a paper, "Africa After the Music Stops," commenting on the G8 Gleneagles summit,  by Susan E. Rice in Yale Global Online.

Despite President Bush's compelling rhetoric the week before Gleneagles on the importance to US national security of poverty reduction in Africa, the US contributed little to the summit's positive outcomes.  Of the additional US$25 billion promised to Africa, the US agreed to provide just US$4 billion.  The EU committed over US$17 billion of this total, and Japan and Canada the remainder.  The US share is meagre, considering the relative size of its economy, and falls well short of the customary minimum US contribution to multilateral funding instruments of at least 25 percent, or US$6 billion.  

President Bush went into the G8 summit trumpeting that his administration had already tripled his predecessor's African aid level.  He then pledged to double US aid to Africa yet again from 2004 levels by 2010.  Unfortunately these claims and pledges do not bear up under close scrutiny.  In reality, the Bush administration did not triple - or even double - aid to Africa from 2000 to 2004.  In real dollar terms US aid to Africa increased 56 percent over that period, and more than half that increase consisted of emergency food aid, which saves lives but has no lasting development impact.

Moreover, the US$4 billion in additional annual aid that President Bush pledged for Africa by 2010 will include very little new money.  Virtually all of the increase promised by 2010 amounts to a re-packing and re-pledging of prior and, as yet, unfulfilled commitments the President made a few years ago when he unveiled his Millennium Challenge Account and Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.  The funding for these two programmes intentionally "fell short of his promises. The "back loaded," so that the bulk of the expenditure would occur in the programmes' later years.  Yet, the President's budget request even for the early years of these programmes fell short of his promises.  The US Congress further cut those request, leaving the major shortfall to be made up in the coming years, if the President's original commitments are to be met.

It is reasonable to suspect some comparable "smoke and mirrors" behind the pledge made by other  G8 members widening still further the potential gap between the optimism that accompanied the Gleneagles communiqué and the incremental benefits likely to accrue to African nations.  The commitments of each    G8 country deserve careful comparison with prior pledges to ascertain how much of the Gleneagles money will actually be "new."

It is equally important to hold the signatory leaders and their successors accountable for their Gleneagles commitments. The upcoming WTO Ministerial in December 2005 will be the first crucial test of the success of the Gleneagles summit.  The WTO session will shape the outcome of the Doha Development Round, which has failed thus far to make meaningful progress on trade subsidies.  If G8 countries fail to commit in Hong Kong to an early date for the elimination of agricultural subsidies and related measures, the hopes raised by Gleneagles will be dashed.       [ back ]

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