While the G8 and Africa issue is very much still with us, we have tried to include a few reactions to Gleneagles from both academic and NGO circles, especially  as there has been a pause while the dust settles. There has inevitably been some back-tracking, especially on the debt issue, and senior staffers at the World Bank have queried the lack of sufficient compensation envisaged at Gleneagles to the bank's soft loan arm for poorer countries - the International Development Association (IDA). They urged that donors should pay the entire amount owed to the IDA up front, or it would have difficulty meeting its commitments. There have been other doubts expressed about the workability of the Gleneagles debt deal from some non-G8 rich countries. Reservations about increased aid, expressed when the Africa Commission Report was published (and before), continue to be voiced, but there have also been spirited defence of the rich continuing to assist the poor. 

African reaction to the whole exercise has, on the whole, been muted, as there has been a strong feeling on the continent of being a spectator, while official reactions have been cautiously approving. After all, you do not look a gift horse in the mouth.  Both Presidents Obasanjo and Mbeki, the tandem of African 'hegemons' who have done so much to help bring the event about, gave cautious approval, although Obasanjo must have been rendered more comfortable by the announcement on June 30, in the week before the G8, of a deal on Nigeria's debt with the Paris Club, which was also mentioned in the Gleneagles communiqué, and contributed to the ambiance of well-being. The Millennium Development Goals’ "half-way" Summit in New York in September was also to be an important milestone, in view of expectations that many African countries have already been falling short of the 2015 targets. Some hard appraisals also come at the annual assemblies of the World Bank/IMF at the end of September.

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.