What can Africa expect from the G8?

I was travelling in Germany all of last week, 13-20 May 2007, like a politician on a whistle stop campaign. My journey had begun in Nairobi. I went via Amstadam to Hamburg. From Hamburg, I travelled by road to Rostock then off by train to the beautiful Gothe town of Weimar, from where we again got on the train to Bonn via Frankfurt.

This is not election year in Germany. Even if it were, I could not be campaigning for a seat in the Bundestag, or the European parliament, since I am neither a German nor a European citizen.

But it was a campaign of a sort. I was participating in various pre-G8 summit activities and events organised by the UN Millennium Campaign in Germany, in partnership with other civil society and NGO groups, including the Catholic church, and even elements of the private sector who support the global campaign against poverty.

Many of my colleagues had doubts and wondered if it was a good use of my time and energy. One cynical colleague even suggested that I was perhaps just going just for the trip. Another who knew that this could not be the case, and that I definitely could not be going there for the weather, consoled the others with a more philosophical doubt: 'Tajudeen is a servant of lost causes who believes that he can make stones hear!'

Their cynicism is not without foundation. It is not that they do not know the significance of the most important club of the richest countries in the world. They are very much aware that G8 countries dominate global trade, commerce, finance, global institutions, corporations and disproportionately use, misuse and abuse global resources; and that against this stark reality, the rest of us look like poor tenants living on the fringes of the real estate of the G8 countries.

Rather their scepticism is based on painful lessons from previous G8 summits. Their expectation now is 'not to expect anything at all'. That way, they protect themselves against disappointment. It is not that they do not believe that there are many things this club of the world’s most powerful countries could do about the world’s problems, from poverty to pollution; but that they no longer hold their breath that they will.

I call these non-expectations the post-Gleneagles downward spiral. The G8 summit in that Scottish town in 2005 raised so much hope that the richer countries of the world were able, ready and willing to stop treating the overwhelming majority of the poorer peoples of the world as illegal tenants; rather as fellow human beings in a shared estate that respects our common humanity with dignity.

At Gleneagles, old commitments such as those contained in the Millennium Declaration, as translated into the MDGs, were renewed, while additional promises were made to fast track the end of the extreme poverty and hunger, reform global financial and trading regimes to facilitate fairer trade, write of the odious debts of poor countries, improve both the quantity and the quality and effectiveness of aid.

2005 was even declared ‘the year of Africa’ - thanks to the discredited, soon to be ex-prime minister, Tony Blair - amidst optimism that the world would stop doing wrong to Africa and start playing fair; while African leaders would also stop doing wrong by their peoples by improving governance and increasing accountability to their own citizens.

Initially there was a buzz of activities to potentially shut up the critics and cynics. Debt relief was provided for 14 African countries that were already in the HIPC initiative. Non-HIPC African countries - Nigeria for example - had some of their debt cancelled while they paid off the rest. (Nigeria paid back more to Britain in 2005/2006 than the global total of British aid – therefore raising the question: who is aiding whom?)

But the majority of the African countries, unable to pay their debts, are still waiting on bended knees at the G8 doors. The volume of aid also increased in quantity. But the old habits of tied aid, rewarding current favoured leaders, and withholding from those out of favour, lack of coordination, non-delivery and not meeting promises are still the practice.

With hindsight, even the aid increase was soon revealed to be paper money because it was mostly debt relief. And Nigeria and Iraq swallowed a larger proportion of it.

However 2005 represented a high point in both public awareness in the G8 countries and globally about these issues, forcing political leaders to take note and recommit themselves to doing something.

Today, that something is lagging behind all expectations. Aid levels are now falling because G8 leaders are backsliding and retreating from their commitments.

And yet in the troika of trade, debt and aid, aid is the weakest link, though the most visible politically.

Aid can be doubled, tripled or quadrupled. But without further significant movement on trade and universal debt relief, the poorer countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America will continue to be trapped in the vicious cycle of structural poverty, induced and reproduced by the unequal terms of global trading regimes, imposed by the richer countries through the IMF, World Bank, EU and WTO.

Poor countries can trade their way fairly from poverty to prosperity. Aid is like emergency treatment at the scene of accident. It is well appreciated, and often timely. But it does not mean that the wounded should not go for proper medical examination. For long term development, it is not aid that these African need, but a fairer trading system and opportunity to choose their own development model.

Most African countries produce what they do not consume and largely consume what they do not produce. But the price of both what they produce and consume are determined from outside, namely the EU, G8 and now increasingly China.

Therefore Africa cannot be aided out of poverty without a fundamental reform of the unequal trade that is rigged against our producers, workers, professionals and domestic companies. Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprising, this is the one area where the G8 countries, the EU and the US have continued to conspire against the poorest peoples of the world in the stagnated so called development round – the Doha negotiations in the WTO.

If the G8 wants to renew the faith of its own citizens in their leadership of the world, and convince poor countries that they actually mean what they say, the answer is very simple: honour your own commitments.

Africa does not need new promises, but the fulfilment of old ones. Both the ones we made to ourselves through the African Union, Nepad and the MDGs, and those promised by the G8.

Everywhere I spoke, I told my German friends and other activists who care about international development, many of whom are as frustrated with their leaders’ broken promises that we are doubly disappointed with ours and the G8.

The next G8 summit in the East German town of Heiligendamm should not be business as usual, but business in the most unusual way. And that means two things: No more new promises, but the honouring of all the old ones. That would be a truly welcome surprise.