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Africa: G8 Deaf to African Voices
AFRICA ACTION
Africa Policy E-Journal
June 6, 2003 (030606)
Africa: G8 Deaf to African Voices
(Reposted from sources cited below)
This posting contains three statements released on the occasion of
the G8 Summit: the first is a joint statement from African NGOs and
trade unions denouncing the summit a "stunning" failure to address
African concerns, while noting that the G8 still have outstanding
obligations and commitments to fulfill. The second is a press
release from the annual meeting of African Ministers of Finance,
Planning, and Economic Development, with several pointed
resolutions on issues requiring action by the G8. And the third is
a statement issued before the G8 summit by UN Secretary-General
Kofi Annan, calling attention to the failure to advance
sufficiently on the agreed Millennium Development Goals.
+++++++++++++++++end summary/introduction+++++++++++++++++++++++
G8 SUMMITS 2002 TO 2003: FROM A TRICKLE TO A DROP
JOINT STATEMENT FROM AFRICAN NGOS AND TRADE UNIONS AS THE G8
SUMMIT COMES TO AN END IN EVIAN, FRANCE
Tuesday, 3rd June 2003
The outcome of the 2003 Summit of the G8 reveals that the political
will of the eight most powerful nations to meet their obligations
to Africa has simply dried up.
2001 saw the G8 summit heavy on rhetoric, 2002 saw the release of
a G8 Africa Action Plan, but the outcome of the 2003 Summit has
been stunning on its failure to make progress on the Debt, health,
trade and agriculture issues.
Quite apart from the obligations of the G8 to Africa or the meeting
of the Millennium Development Goals in Africa, the G8 has failed
to match the progress reached by the African Union over the last
year.
Aid, the Monterrey Commitments and Debt
1. We, representatives of five of the largest continental
organisations and national networks headquartered in five Africa
cities, bringing together women's organisations, labour,
researchers, development and advocacy NGOs across Africa, recognise
that there has been some progress on raising the US$6 billion
promised by the G8 in 2002. However, the G8 is still a long way
off meeting the US$25-35 billion required by the UN to halve
poverty in Africa by 2015. Much of the new pledges announced
recently including the well appreciated US$10 billion offered by
the US for Global AIDS programmes or the money to fill the HIPC
finance gap are not on the table yet. It should be noted that the
G8 continues to spend less than 0.3% of their gross national
product on aid. In all, the G8 Summit closes with offers of
assistance in the range of less than 1% of what was spent on the
war in Iraq.
Health and HIV/AIDS
2. In the light of the deadlock in the last Doha WTO
Inter-ministerial, the G8 summit is a lost opportunity for
progress on the right of African countries to import, produce and
distribute cheap life-saving drugs such as anti-retroviral medicine
for AIDS and other life threatening diseases.
3. This G8 has failed to indicate sufficient progress in raising
the resources to eradicate polio, combat tuberculosis, malaria and
HIV/AIDS. The amount allocated is still a far cry from the
$10billion the UN fund needs, to treat and prevent these diseases.
4. We reaffirm that the right to clean, affordable and accessible
water is critical both to African growth, fighting AIDS and
arresting common pandemics such as cholera etc. We are concerned
that the international policy discourse on water is dislocated
from the experience in Africa of privatisation schemes that leave
private suppliers unable to supply water at affordable rates for
the poor and more importantly, poor people without water.
Trade and Agriculture
5. The 2003 G8 was ultimately a disaster for African farmers. It
failed to adopt even limited proposals for a moratorium on
reducing European and American tariff duties and subsidies for US
and European agriculture. These policies are perverse. While
millions of African farmers, most women's livelihoods, are ruined
by these policies, European livestock are ensured major state
subsidies.
6. We note the commitment of the G8 to refocus on support to
African agriculture, but the G8 avoided translating this
commitment into a tangible amount.
Lessons for Africa
7. One or two drops of aid out of Evian amounts to a small patch
for the haemorrhaging economies of Africa. Without a change in
world trade rules, the rhetoric of ensuring a fresh start for
Africa will not translate into meaningful action or a new
partnership for Africa. We strongly urge Africa leaders and
citizens to take forward the initiative and the primary
responsibility for resolving Africa's development crises. Key on
our horizon is the need to prepare a common African position in the
lead up to the WTO Inter-ministerial in Cancun, Mexico.
8. Despite the failure of Evian, the G8 continues to have
outstanding obligations and commitments to Africa. For this
reason, Africa must remain on the agenda of the G8 until these
obligations are fulfilled. We shall continue to track, lobby and
inform public opinion of these obligations.
SIGNATORIES
Representatives of five of the largest continental organisations
and national networks headquartered in five Africa cities, bringing
together women's organisations, labour, researchers, development
and advocacy NGOs across Africa, met and signed this statement.
AWEPON
African Womens Empowerment Network
Helen Wangusa, Coordinator, Kampala, Uganda
Mob Tel :+256-77-522-717 Off Tel: +256-41-286-916
COSATU
The Congress of South African Trade Unions
Neva Matgetla, Head, Policy Unit, Johannesburg, South Africa
Mob Tel: +27-82-5636968
FEMNET
African Womens Communication and Development Network
Muthoni Wanyeki, Executive Director, Nairobi, Kenya
Mob Tel: + 254-733605812 Off Tel: +254-2-3741301/20
MWENGO Mwelekeo wa NGO
Ezra Mbogori, Executive Director, Harare, Zimbabwe
Off Tel + 263-4-721469 Hm Tel: + 263-4-884306
Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition
Brian Kagoro, Coordinator, Harare, Zimbabwe
Mob Tel + 263-91266430
Ends
Economic Commission for Africa
PRESS RELEASE No. 8/2003
AFRICAN MINISTERS PRONOUNCE ON AID, TRADE, DEBT, IMF, HIV/AIDS
Issued by the ECA Communication Team
P.O. Box 3001, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Tel: +251-1-51 58 26; Fax: +251-1-51 03 65
E-mail: ecainfo@uneca.org
Web: http://www.uneca.org
Addis Ababa, 2 June 2003 (ECA) -- Ministers of Finance, Planning
and Economic Development ended their annual meeting yesterday with
specific proposals aimed at advancing the agenda on issues that are
critical to Africa's development.
A summary of key issues raised in the Ministerial Statement issued
at the close of yesterday's Conference follows:
On Aid and Development Effectiveness, the Ministers:
- Welcomed the accession by 15 African countries to the African
Peer Review Mechanism envisaged under the New Partnership for
Africa's Development (NEPAD), urged these countries to move forward
with peer review, and urged others to sign up;
- Welcomed progress on aid quality and ODA commitments, but warned
that the level of aid flows to Africa remained a major concern and
needed to be further increased;
- Welcomed the proposed International Finance Facility (IFF) as
"the first of its kind designed to mobilize additional resources
for the poorest countries to meet the MDGs";
- Urged Africa's partners to ensure that all policies impacting on
African development, including those in the areas of ODA, trade,
market access, and agriculture, were consistent with the MDGs, and
recommended that Africa's partners adopt domestic policy measures
that would increase FDI flows to Africa;
On Trade, the Ministers:
- Expressed their deep concern on the negative impact of OECD
agricultural subsidies on the African agriculture sector, and
called for action by OECD countries to front-load the benefits of
trade liberalization for the poorest countries by providing
immediate duty-free and quota-free market access, removing
non-tariff barriers, and developing an appropriate price
stabilization mechanism;
- Warned that negotiations on the key elements of the Doha
Development Round had achieved little, with key deadlines for
market access for agricultural products, TRIPS and public health,
and special and differential treatment missed; and
- Urged Africa's development partners to respond positively to
African proposals so as to make the September 2003 Cancun WTO
Ministerial Meeting a success
On Debt, the Ministers:
- Warned that the enhanced Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC)
initiative was not delivering long-term debt sustainability and
called for the rapid establishment of a legal technical assistance
facility to help HIPC deal with creditor litigation;
- Recognized that domestic debt in many African countries requires
urgent attention because it reduces fiscal flexibility, raises
domestic interest rates and crowds out investment; and
- Endorsed the Economic Commission for Africa's plan to convene an
African Expert Group Meeting on debt relief in September 2003 to be
followed by an International Conference on African Debt in early
2004, to "meet the challenge of defining the policies, instruments
and initiatives that can constitute the next step in the
international community's efforts to reduce Africa's debt burden".
On the role of the IMF, the Ministers:
- Recommended that the IMF assist African countries in developing
a menu of policy options, impose fewer structural conditions, and
provide for "floating tranches" or outcomes-based conditions where
appropriate;
- Urged the Bretton Woods Institutions, bilateral partners and the
African Development Bank to avoid cross-conditionalities that
impede African access to much-needed resources;
- Recommended that to provide greater fiscal flexibility, the IMF
should also analyze the linkages, trade-offs and policy choices
required to attain the MDGs, as a basis for discussions with
development partners on mobilizing the additional resources
required for progress towards the MDGs.
- Proposed that evaluating exogenous shocks -- commodity price
volatility, natural disasters and aid shortfalls -- should be a
standard feature of IMF discussions with member states, and that
access to concessional lending should be extended to countries
suffering from exceptional exogenous shocks such as terrorist
attacks and the onslaught of new communicable diseases.
On HIV/AIDS, the Ministers:
- Projected that the HIV/AIDS epidemic will cut approximately one
per cent from GDP growth rates, significantly diminishing the
prospects of realizing the economic expansion necessary to reduce
poverty;
- Articulated the crucial leadership role of Ministers of Finance,
Planning and Economic Development in mobilizing sufficient
resources to confront the disease and identifying strategies to
mitigate the adverse socio-economic impacts of the epidemic;
- Stressed that additional resources were urgently needed to
support Africa's efforts in confronting HIV/AIDS; and
- Urged the Bretton Woods Institutions to consider revising the
eligibility criteria for assistance to middle income countries
afflicted by the AIDS epidemic, and to find ways of ensuring that
countries could expand expenditure on health and social welfare
without violating conditionalities that impose limits on public
spending.
The Conference was organized by ECA on the theme 'Towards greater
policy coherence and mutual accountability for development
effectiveness', and was being held back-to-back with the Annual
Meetings of the African Development Bank (ADB), taking place at the
United Nations Conference Center in Addis Ababa. The Annual
Meetings Symposium, held today and previously a hallmark of the ADB
Annual Meetings, was jointly sponsored by the ADB and ECA.
(END)
For the full text of the Ministerial Statement, a well as all other
documents related to this year's Conference, please visit
http://www.uneca.org/conferenceofministers .
Documents from previous conferences, including Ministerial
Statements, are also available at the same site.
For more on the Annual Symposium and the African development Bank
Annual meetings, visit http://www.afdb.org
For more on the IFF, visit http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/documents/
For more on the IMF, visit http://www.imf.org
Press Release - June 2, 2003
SG/SM/8730 DEV/2415
SECRETARY-GENERAL URGES 'GROUP OF EIGHT' LEADERS TO SUPPORT ACTION
TO ATTAIN MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
Following is the text of remarks by Secretary-General Kofi Annan on
the Millennium Development Goals at the Group of Eight Summit
(afternoon working session) in Evian, France, on 1 June:
Sustained growth and development require not only sound national
and global economic policies and the absence of conflict nationally
and regionally, but also a universal sense of global security. The
investments in counter-terrorism need to be complemented by
actions at the international level, for example in the area of
trade, to restore the relatively optimistic global political mood
that prevailed when the Millennium Declaration was adopted.
We face many development challenges, but it is no good tackling
them piecemeal. Each of them affects all the others. We need to
tackle them all together, with a common strategy, a clear
timetable, and measurable targets.
Fortunately, we already have them: the eight Millennium Development
Goals - or MDGs - adopted by all nations less than three years ago,
and confirmed at last years conferences in Monterrey and
Johannesburg as the core agenda of international development
cooperation. Allow me to remind you that some of you were at
Monterrey last year, and all of your countries signed on to this
agenda.
You may recall that you also asked me to issue periodic progress
reports. So how are we doing? Let me give you a few highlights from
the scorecard:
- The proportion of people living in extreme poverty has actually
increased in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, central and eastern
Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Only East
Asia and the Pacific are on pace to meet the poverty Goal, while
South Asia is making good progress.
- Africa, South Asia and the Arab States need to greatly
accelerate their progress if they are to achieve universal primary
education.
- Progress in promoting gender equality and empowering women has
been made in all regions, but sub-Saharan Africa lags behind. The
same holds true for efforts to reduce child mortality.
- Only two countries - Thailand and Uganda - have managed to
reverse the spread of AIDS once it reached crisis proportions.
- Many regions are making progress in upgrading slums, improving
access to safe drinking water, and integrating the principles of
sustainable development into policies and programmes. But in some
places, such as East Asia, efforts to ensure environmental
sustainability are far too slow.
As you can see, formidable challenges lie ahead if we are to even
come close to meeting the Goals. As for the eighth Goal - to
develop a global partnership for development - this meeting can
make an important difference.
Of course, development goals have to be attained mainly in, and by,
developing countries. Many of them are putting the MDGs at the
centre of their development strategies. And they are applying the
very policy prescriptions that you, the G-8 countries, have asked
for. Their efforts deserve your support, since most cannot reach
the MDGs on their own.
They need deeper and faster debt relief, so that even more spending
can be shifted from debt service to basic needs.
They need better access to global markets, which means a Doha Round
that lowers agricultural subsidies and brings down barriers to
imports from poor countries. This Round also needs to ensure that
poor people have access to affordable medicine.
And they need more and better aid -- official development
assistance that helps them carry out good-faith domestic reforms.
Most of you, I know, have really shown your commitment by
increasing aid and, while we are still far from our goal of
finding the extra 50 billion dollars a year that is needed, at
aminimum, to achieve the MDGs, I think it's a very good signal that
we must continue.
I know you are looking at a number of innovative ideas, such as the
International Finance Facility proposed by Gordon Brown.
Also new and innovative partnerships have come out of Johannesburg,
especially in the area of water and sanitation, and we applaud the
water initiative of the European Union.
But we also need a healthy growing economy. And the countries
around this table, which represent the larger economies both from
the North and the South, have a special responsibility to steer the
global economy and pull all countries along with them.
+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
Date distributed (ymd): 030606
Region: Continent-Wide
Issue Areas: +economy/development+
The Africa Action E-Journal is a free information service
provided by Africa Action, including both original
commentary and reposted documents. Africa Action provides this
information and analysis in order to promote U.S. and
international policies toward Africa that advance economic,
political and social justice and the full spectrum of
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