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. 

Although as many have observed, it is still not quite clear what was agreed in Gleneagles. Even though we have the text of the final communiqué, the main thrust of the content was that there was enough there for Mr Blair to claim a triumph and get a valuable endorsement by Sir Bob Geldof. The authors of the Africa Commission Report worked hard to secure as much as possible of the report's recommendations, but these were buried in the details of the communiqué on such areas as health and education, governance and capacity building, the brain drain and measures against corruption. The key elements of the 'big push' which attracted most attention were the commitments on aid which, because one was dealing with really vast figures and using the word 'doubling,' itself a little suggestive of magic, easily caused people to fall over backwards in amazement, even if it seems that not everybody had really signed up to it. It also did not adopt Gordon Brown's proposed International Finance Facility (IFF), which several G8 countries still have reservations about; nor did it adopt the recommendation of both the Africa Commission and the AU Heads of State for 100 per cent debt cancellation.  

Some reports suggest that the concessions which made the difference came from the Germans and the Japanese (these are to some extent confirmed by Oxfam). But it is more likely that these were easier to come by in the atmosphere of sympathy for Mr Blair, generated by the fact that the opening day of the summit had been horribly marred by bombs in London, causing serious loss of life. It is less certain that the concerts and demonstrations plucked any G8 heartstrings, and the tendency now to assume that the violins have stopped playing is to wonder whether it is going to be easy to pick up the Kananaskis G8 process, and how much will actually be possible during the Russian chairmanship of the G8 in 2006.  

Although sometimes, in “Geldofian” excess, it went off message, it was, give or take some evident hiccups, at least largely a public relations success for the African image. It is an irony that news of the famine in Niger broke just three weeks after Gleneagles - the wrong time to stage another pop concert. And commentators have been diverted by the embarrassing attempt of the Niger President to say there was not really a famine, although he was perfectly right to say there is hunger every year throughout the Sahel without any international intervention. He is also, unfortunately, right in saying that there is always an element in these stories of the media colluding with aid agencies to over-dramatise the story for fund-raising purposes. Even so, there has been real hunger, and real mortality, not just in Niger but in other Sahelian countries, which, unhappily, is part of Africa's continuing reality.          [back]

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