IN a monumental decision, the G8 have finally acted to salvage Africa from poverty. The breakthrough at the summit at Gleneagles, Scotland, came on Friday after Japan and Germany announced a decision to increase their contributions, Tokyo alone chipping in with $10 billion. Together, the G8 pledged $48 billion in aid for development worldwide over a period of five years, the lion’s share — an increase by $25 billion — going to Africa. Whether the aid will actually lead to poverty alleviation in the world’s poorest continent is a big question. Africa’s economic travails are massive and widespread. While poverty worldwide has gone down, in the case of Africa it rose from 45 to 46 per cent during 2003. It is higher than in South Asia by 17 per cent. There are two main reasons for the lack of success in the poverty alleviation programmes. First, the effects of growth do not seep down to the masses, and very few countries in Africa have a growth rate higher than seven per cent. Second, most growth in Africa is based on capital- not labour-intensive projects. This means employment generation is not keeping pace with population growth and the number of new entrants in the job market. Another question is whether the African countries receiving aid will be able to utilize it, given the corruption and incompetence that mark governance in many of them.

Aid activists have expressed disappointment at the summit’s decision. They say the aid pledged by the G8 summit — “by around $50 billion” — will mean less than $130 billion over the next five years, which is less than the $180 billion visualized by the Millennium Development Goals. But it is the five-year period that has disappointed many Africa watchers. They want the $25 billion to flow into Africa immediately if urgent action is to be taken in some vital sectors, including the fight against AIDS. The summit promised to end aid subsidies on farm exports to Africa — which hurt African agriculture — without giving a date.

Some other aspects of the summit decisions have also come under criticism, especially those concerning the environment. The reference to climatic changes “as a serious and long-term challenge” is tepid and seems designed to avoid a specific programme for cutting energy emissions in stages, probably because President George Bush blocked action by the other seven. But the summit could claim success when the American president signed the declaration, which attributes climatic changes to human activity, especially the effect of greenhouse gas emissions damaging the ozone layer. To critics, no clear-cut strategy was outlined for bringing America into the Kyoto protocol. But the US agreed to be part of the G8 dialogue with emerging countries on greenhouse effects in November.

Africa has welcomed the decision, but many nations have expressed fear that the commitments may not be honoured. There are at least two examples where aid pledges by international conferences have not been honoured. The Tokyo summit, held in 2002, had pledged $4.5 billion to Afghanistan, but only a trickle was received by Kabul. Similarly, the money promised to the Palestinian Authority after the signing of the Oslo accords never arrived. Aid donors blamed the violence in Afghanistan and Palestine for the aid freeze. Africa is no less unstable, plagued as it is by what Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo called “war, disease and dire poverty”. Nevertheless, the summit’s decision constitutes the biggest-ever financial help for Africa.

THE fact that Pakistan’s population growth rate is down from over three per cent some years ago to about two per cent should not be a reason for complacency. As speakers at a recent seminar in Karachi pointed out the other day, there must be countrywide campaigns focusing on the need to implement the national population planning programme. With three million people being added every year to the existing figure of 150 million, it is feared that in another five years it would become practically impossible to cope with the already excessive pressure on space and resources as the country crossed the 200 million mark.

It is unfortunate that population planning in Pakistan has not been the success story that it has been, for instance, in Bangladesh and Iran. One can perhaps put this down to the half-hearted efforts made by population authorities — although it must be admitted that they have had to work under exceptionally difficult conditions — to raise awareness among the people about the desirability of small family norms and the need to restrict the fertility rate. Perhaps their biggest failure lies in their inability to empower women, most of whom are married off at a young age, and later, have no say in the number of children they want to have. In some communities, the use of contraceptives is strongly frowned upon as the number of children, especially sons, is seen as necessary for reasons of economic security in later years. However, another factor that is equally responsible for the high growth rate is the poor accessibility of couples, especially those living in rural areas where even basic health care is virtually non-existent, to contraceptives and information on family planning. Population control campaigns should then be two-pronged. They should aim at making contraceptives readily available to couples. At the same time, they should make people aware of the undesirability of large families.

JUDGING by the picture carried by this newspaper on Saturday, it was an emotional homecoming for the second batch of 86 Pakistani ‘camel kids’, aged between three and 18 years, who arrived in Lahore on Thursday. This is no surprise. For while relieved to have escaped the daily ordeal that they were put through in the notorious camel camps of the UAE, most face an uncertain future here as well, with their families, some of them untraceable, mired in poverty. These young boys formed a vital part of their parents’ and siblings’ economic support, although at great cost to their own physical and mental well-being. One hopes that the young jockeys will be adequately compensated for their suffering and for the loss of part of their childhood years to a dangerous and physically demanding sport, and that the authorities will make long-term arrangements for their rehabilitation and reintegration in society. There are still some 2,000 Pakistani child jockeys remaining in the Gulf, whose repatriation is on the cards under an agreement between the UAE and the UN.

Under intense international pressure, the UAE has set about framing strict rules for camel racing, and has imposed a ban on use of jockeys under 16. It is unlikely, therefore, that Pakistani children will again be smuggled to the Gulf to be used in the sport. However, the authorities here must remain vigilant to the possibilities of human smuggling for other purposes. There are several illicit trades and children are always an easy target. At the root of this is the grinding poverty that compels parents to ‘sell’ their children to racketeers. Until economic deprivation is tackled as part of the long-term measures to rehabilitate camel jockeys, and other young victims of similarly dangerous pursuits, there will be no means of ensuring that our children are protected against the designs of operators in human trade.