LONDON: An enormous amount of words have been expended on the poor and hungry of the world in recent weeks.

First, there was the much-hyped trip across Africa undertaken in May by the so-called ‘odd couple’ — the United States Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, and U2’s frontman, Bono.

Hard on the heels of that came the Food Summit in Rome in early June, followed by the G7 (the G8 minus Russia) finance ministers’ meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

But nothing earth-shattering came from the recent Kananaskis meeting. Four African heads of State — including Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa — presented the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD). Although the new organization aims to propel Africa into economic development, ending hunger and poverty on the continent, the only definite outcome to emerge was $1 billion earmarked for debt reduction. Any money for NEPAD itself was spoken of in future terms, similarly to the international community’s pledge at Monterrey, Mexico, in February, to increase official development assistance by $12 billion a year from 2006.

In Kananaskis, last month, the G8 agreed that at least half of this new money would go to reforming African countries but the cash will not become available for four years. It is perhaps little wonder the G8 offer was greeted with derision.

‘They’re offering peanuts,’ said Phil Twyford of the British charity, Oxfam. And Cafod, the Catholic aid organization, said the G8 had squandered an opportunity to help the poor in Africa and had, on the contrary, offered the continent only rhetoric and recycled promises.

In a way, Africa deserved this slap in the face. To imagine, as its leaders did, that by dashing off to wine and dine with the G8 leaders they would obtain financing for NEPAD to the tune of $64 billion, when only a few weeks earlier, the leader of the richest country, President Bush, had announced US domestic agricultural subsidies totalling $190 billion, amounted to naivety.

Britain and France, two nations the Africans could have counted on to be sympathetic, belong to the European Union which, like America, subsidises its agricultural products — in this case, to the tune of $160 billion a year. Although it seems impossible for the fragile economies of Africa to compete with this level of subsidy, this is nevertheless where Africa’s battle with the G8 should be fought.

While the continent’s leaders prefer to tinker with issues of aid and debt reduction, the fundamental question of Africans achieving a fair price for their exports remains unanswered. The scales of power hopelessly favour the Western purchasing companies, which are often supported by their nation’s foreign affairs and trade ministries. Economic aid is often suspected of being tied to purchase agreements and history abounds with examples of corruption and military intervention oiling the wheels of the business decision.

The time has now come for human rights to include the right to obtain a fair price for export products as without fair trade, disease, poverty and famine will continue to burden Africa. Indeed, while the price of paid for African coffee in 2002 is lower than what it was 20 years ago, a motor car or tractor bought from Europe or America now costs three times as much as it did 20 years ago.

This is the battle we which African leaders should be joining with the G8. Until they do they will be irrelevant to the solution of the continent’s problems. Certainly, looking for scraps from the G8 table, won’t help, as has been made only too clear on recent days.—Dawn/The Observer News Service.