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Foot-dragging over aid pledges to Africa `grotesque'

Larry Elliott

Rich countries only 10 per cent of the way to their target.

THE WEST'S foot-dragging over aid pledges to Africa was described on Tuesday night as "grotesque" and a threat to the lives of the world's poor by the body set up by Tony Blair to monitor the results of the Gleneagles summit.

Almost two years after the G8 group of leading industrial nations promised to boost development assistance by $50 billion a year by 2010, the Africa Progress Panel headed by the former United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, said rich countries were only 10 per cent of the way to their target.

"If the efforts to double aid by 2010 are not increased soon it will be too late," Mr. Annan said as the APP presented its findings in Berlin to Mr. Blair and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who will host this year's G8 summit in early June.

Mr. Annan said the commitment to doubling aid had fallen year on year since Gleneagles. "In 2005 we did well, by 2006 we were sliding, and unless we now make about $5 billion available a year we will not make that target," he said.

Bob Geldof, the musician and lobbyist who also sits on the APP, said the promises of "economic justice" made at Gleneagles, on which Mr. Blair had staked his legacy as Prime Minister, were in danger of collapsing. This amounted to a "grotesque abrogation of responsibility."

Mr. Geldof singled out Germany and Italy for criticism, but Mr. Blair said he was confident the international community's will to act was still there. "If we do not take a responsible and long-term view of Africa, and its need to develop and make progress, we will end up ultimately with our own self-interest back in countries like Germany and the U.K. being damaged as a result of the poverty, the conflict, the mass migration, the spread of terrorism and so on," he said. "So I think there is a strong moral cause but I think it's a cause closely allied to our own self-interest. We know that there is very much more that still needs to be done," Mr. Blair told a press conference. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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