LONDON: This was supposed to be Africa’s year. There was talk of fresh starts, of links that would be forged between Africa’s new breed of dynamic leaders and western cash, of markets that would be opened and stomachs that would be filled. Instead, it is the same dismal story.

In Johannesburg next month, world leaders will gather for the summit on sustainable development, a 10-day talk fest that will only emphasize the gulf in thinking that divides the first and third worlds. It will achieve nothing.

Meanwhile, in a band of countries to the north — Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique — more than 14 million people are facing starvation in the continent’s worst famine in 10 years. So much for the idea that 2002 would see a new Marshall plan for Africa.

Even at the best of times, the notion that the west would devote its energy to Africa was always supremely optimistic. The past 12 months have assuredly not been the best of times; the terrorist attacks on September 11, the slowing of the global economy and the precipitous decline in stock markets have seen to that.

Tony Blair did his best for Africa at last month’s G8 summit in Kananaskis, but the brutal truth is that he didn’t get far. Downing Street aides were furious when Oxfam said Africa had been offered “recycled peanuts”, but that was about the strength of it. Blair and his colleagues have been trying to persuade other western nations to raise their game, but it is proving to be a depressingly slow process.

The annual human development report published by the United Nations last week highlighted the extent of the problem. In 1990, at a previous international junket in Thailand, goals were set for development that were to be hit by the end of the 20th century. Predictably, once the world leaders were back home, nothing was done.

The date for achieving the targets was put back to 2015. Still, progress is proving glacially slow, with some countries going backwards. At current trends, according to the UN report, it will take more than 130 years to rid the world of hunger, while 81 countries, accounting for 60 per cent of the world’s people, are not on track to reduce infant mortality by 2015.

“Most troubling, many of the countries least likely to achieve the goals are the world’s poorest. And most are in sub-Saharan Africa: 23 of the region’s 44 countries are failing in most areas, and another 11, such as Angola and Rwanda, have too little data to make a judgment.

“South Africa is the only country in the region where less than 10 per cent of children are malnourished. In six countries — including Eritrea, Ethiopia and Niger — the share is more than 40 per cent. Without a dramatic turnaround there is a real possibility that, a generation from now, world leaders will be setting the same targets again.”

The famine in southern Africa threatens to put the millennium targets even further out of reach. Nobody comes out of the present crisis with much credit. Clearly, much of the blame lies with the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe, which has turned a country that exported maize to the rest of the region into a basket case that cannot even feed itself.

The problems in Malawi and Zambia are linked to the drying-up of food supplies from Zimbabwe, but were compounded by the decision, on the advice of the IMF, to run down food reserves. The fund’s advice was well intentioned. Storing large quantities of food is costly and inefficient; in a country with strong, non-corrupt governance, it makes better sense to keep reserves in cash that can be used to buy food on the world market.

The extent of the hunger means that the priority is to get large quantities of food to the area now. In the medium term, there are lessons to be learned. Early warning systems need to be improved, with better communication between the governments of southern Africa, which sink or swim together.

It should be recognized that some of the ways in which domestic food markets have been deregulated — abandoning the scheme which helped farmers affected by crop failure by giving them seeds for the following year, for example — have been positively harmful.

Last but not least, the whole question of debt relief needs to be revisited. As Oxfam has pointed out, under the Enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, 26 countries are receiving debt relief, but half of them are still spending 15 per cent or more of government revenue on debt repayments. These repayments are “crowding out” vital public investments in health, education and other areas.

Thirteen of the 26 countries receiving debt relief are still spending more on debt than on public health. Zambia and Malawi have among the highest HIV/Aids prevalence rates in the world. But, while Zambia has almost one million people affected, the country is spending 30 per cent more on debt than on health. Malawi’s health budget is equivalent to its debt-servicing.

In the longer term, the sort of bargain that has been proposed over the past year — financial help and more open markets in return for better governance — makes sense. However, African leaders left Kananaskis convinced that they were being offered a one-sided deal — clean up your governance and we might consider helping you. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service.