June 2, 2003	Monday	Rabi-us-Sani 1, 1424

ANNEMASSE (France): African leaders have joined non- governmental organizations in calling on the Group of Eight countries to deliver on previous commitments, in particular on the Africa Plan of Action that was launched at last year’s G8 Summit in Canada.

In a communique issued at the end of the seventh summit of the Heads of State and Government Implementation Committee of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) held in Abuja, Nigeria, this week, the leaders further urged the international community to ensure that issues concerning Africa remained firmly on the global agenda.

“World peace and security can only be sustained if all nations, developed and developing, fulfil commitments and pledges they made voluntarily,” said the communique, which will be presented to G8 leaders in Evian, France.

At the counter summit in Annemasse, France, the humanitarian relief organization, Oxfam International has also called on leaders of the world’s richest countries not to turn their back on Africa and to launch an all-out war against poverty.

“In just three days the G8 faces a major test of global credibility. African leaders have called on the G8 to deliver on aid and promises and to take steps to reduce agricultural subsidies and reform unjust trade rules,” Irungu Houghton, Oxfam’s African Policy Advisor said.

“If this does not happen the water that flows from the Evian summit will be undrinkable for many of us in Africa,” Houghton said.

Situated in the French Alps, Evian is renowned for its mineral water.

According to Oxfam, more than half of sub-Saharan Africa’s 600 million people still live on less than one dollar a day.

“We are on the brink of another G8 failure. More than ever we need real action against poverty. Across Africa millions of people are fighting their own war against poverty everyday. The danger is that the G8 leaders will fail to play their part because they are distracted by the continuing diplomatic fall-out from the war against Iraq,” says Oxfam.

According to Oxfam spokesperson Caroline Sande Mukulira, the Iraq crisis has demonstrated that vast financial resources can be rapidly mobilised when rich countries believe they have a strategic interest at stake.

Around 70 billion dollars was mobilized by the coalition in a matter of weeks to fight the war, she says. “This is more than five times the aid provided to Africa last year, and more than twice the annual amount of aid Africa needs to meet the Millennium Development Goals, the internationally agreed targets aimed at halving global poverty by 2015. World leaders have shown that when they really want to make something happen, they can and do,” she said.

British development charity, ActionAid says Africa has been let down once again by the G8 nations. In its report titled “Wishful Thinking” which examines what each G8 country has done for Africa since the launch of last year’s African Action Plan, ActionAid concludes that there has been less action since the plan appeared than there was before.

The most astonishing failure, says the report, has been in the area of trade negotiations. “The United States has blocked negotiations which would have given poor people access to cheap drugs for AIDS. European states, most visibly France and Germany, have refused to dismantle agricultural subsidies which undermine the livelihood of farmers in the developing world.”

Charles Abani, director of ActionAid Nigeria told IPS, “It is no good the G8 nations telling us they will get round to Africa’s problems someday. Children cannot wait for their education. People with AIDS cannot wait for their drugs. Our message to the G8 leaders is ‘Don’t keep Africa waiting,’”.

Helen Wangusa, co-ordinator of AWEPON, a women’s network based in 16 African countries told IPS: “The promissory notes issued at the Monterey conference and the G8 summit place the G8 before a global jury. Will they be honoured? African people and particularly African women will watch the summit for signs that the G8 is serious about fighting the poverty caused by debt and conditionality,” she said.

Adding his voice is Nobel Peace Prize winner South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He has called on the G8 leaders to stop protecting their markets and to allow poor countries to benefit rather than being punished by unfair trade. “If the poor were allowed to feed themselves the impact of huge cuts in international aid and the ravages of conflict over scarce resources would vastly diminished. The poor have the right to be heard and the rich have the moral obligation to make this happen,” he said.

Professor Adebayo Olukushi, Secretary General of CODESRIA, Africa’s leading research institute based in Dakar, Senegal, told IPS: “We are on the brink of another G8 failure. We do not need new plans, we need the G8 to deliver on the promises made. The starting point should not be NEPAD but we should go back to the obligations made by the G8 and hold them accountable,” he said.

In a report titled ‘Evian G8 — A Time To Declare A War on Poverty in Africa’, Oxfam says the summit must address the enormous harm being done by the subsidies rich Western countries pay their farmers to produce a glut of cheap food which is dumped on world markets, undercutting African farmers and robbing millions of their livelihoods.

It calls on the G8 leaders to deliver on the promise made at last year’s summit to devote an additional six billion dollars a year in aid to Africa, and agree on a timetable towards reaching the 25-35 billion a year, which the United Nations estimates Africa will need if it is to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

This, says Oxfam, should include delivering five billion dollars annually for basic education, and fully backing the 10 billion dollar Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

It also calls on the G8 to cancel all the debts of African countries struggling to make repayments at the expense of health and education.

G8 member nations include Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.

Since 1996 G8 members have stepped up their dialogue with countries outside their group and this year’s invitees include presidents Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Abdelaziz Bouteflicka of Algeria, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal as well as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.