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Note: This document is from the archive of the Africa Policy E-Journal, published by the Africa Policy Information Center (APIC) from 1995 to 2001 and by Africa Action from 2001 to 2003. APIC was merged into Africa Action in 2001. Please note that many outdated links in this archived document may not work.


Africa: G8 Charade on Africa

Africa: G8 Charade on Africa
Date distributed (ymd): 020628
Africa Action Document

Africa Policy Electronic Distribution List: an information service provided by AFRICA ACTION (incorporating the Africa Policy Information Center, The Africa Fund, and the American Committee on Africa). Find more information for action for Africa at http://www.africaaction.org

+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++

Region: Continent-Wide
Issue Areas: +political/rights+ +economy/development+ +US Policy Focus+

SUMMARY CONTENTS:

This posting contains a press release and two articles from Africa Action prepared before the G8 Summit concluded yesterday in Canada. Unfortunately, there were no surprises and the consensus of observers was that the results for Africa included very few, if any, specific new commitments. In a comment echoed by many others in different words, the U.S humanitarian relief organization Catholic Relief Services labelled the summit's "Africa action plan" an "inaction plan," and noted that two million more Africans will have died of AIDS by the time the leaders meet again next year. Readers can judge the plan for themselves by checking the official summit site at:
http://www.g8.gc.ca/kan_docs/afraction-e.asp

Also distributed today is a posting with excerpts from the new book from Zed Press by David Sogge, Give & Take: What's the Matter with Foreign Aid?, which combines a comprehensive critique of the aid industry with proposals for alternative perspectives for a new framework for international public investment.

+++++++++++++++++end profile++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

AFRICA ACTION PRESS RELEASE

June 25, 2002

Contact: Ann-Louise Colgan 202-546 7961

Ahead of G8 Summit, Africa Action Deplores White House Announcements on Africa. Bush described as "Anti-African" and U.S. policies "A Charade".

Tuesday, June 25, 2002 (Washington, DC) - Ahead of this week's meeting of rich country leaders in Kananaskis, Canada, Africa Action criticized the recent announcements by President Bush on new Africa policy initiatives.

Referring to the new proposals on HIV/AIDS and education announced by the White House last week, as well as President Bush's planned trip to Africa next year, Africa Action's Executive Director Salih Booker said, "These moves are nothing more than a public relations exercise designed to stave off criticism of U.S. indifference at the G8 summit. They represent a charade of "caring for Africa" while actually undermining efforts to address the continent's most critical needs."

Africa Action noted that the White House initiative to reduce mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS came days after President Bush had intervened to derail efforts in Congress to pass an additional $1 billion for the fight against AIDS. "Africa faces the worst public health crisis known to humanity," said Booker today, as he denounced the Bush initiative as "pitifully inadequate and dangerously wrong-headed." According to Africa Action, the narrow focus on preventing mother-to-child transmission "abandons HIVpositive mothers to a death sentence, and can only succeed in exacerbating the AIDS orphans crisis that Africa already faces." Africa Action continues to deplore the failure of the Bush Administration to fund the United Nations Global Fund on AIDS as the most important vehicle for fighting the AIDS pandemic. Bush's proposal on education in Africa is similarly rejected as "a meager attempt to deflect attention from the inadequacies of U.S. policies on Africa's real challenges - AIDS and debt cancellation."

On the New Partnership for Africa's Development, or NEPAD, a plan likely to attract a good deal of attention at this week's summit, Booker cautioned that: "NEPAD is still an emerging initiative that requires broader consultation among African leaders and civil society. It cannot become the cornerstone for a new partnership between African governments and G8 governments until it has first become a partnership between African governments and their own people."

According to Booker, "Bush's basic approach to Africa is to stall, even as 6,000 people die daily due to AIDS alone. Such an approach can only be described as anti-African."


Bush Plays Shell Game with African Lives
by Salih Booker

June 24, 2002

On the eve of a meeting of rich country leaders in Canada, President Bush has brought out a "new initiative" promising $500 million to prevent transmission of HIV/AIDS from mothers to children. Intended to stave off the embarrassment of coming empty-handed to a summit trumpeted as focusing on Africa, the White House initiative is in fact a cynical move to derail more effective action against AIDS.

With a bipartisan congressional coalition poised to approve an additional $500 million or more in AIDS funding for fiscal year 2002, President Bush first put the squeeze on Republican senators to cut the total back to $200 million, half of which could go to the Global AIDS Fund and half for bilateral programs to cut mother-to-child transmission. Then he offered his plan, which claims the $200 million as his own while only promising to ask Congress for another $300 million two years from now. His plan would allow no additional money for the Global Fund.

The administration justifies the smaller amounts and the go-slow timetable by the need to first show "results." But, with 8,000 people around the world dying of AIDS daily (some 6,000 of them in sub-Saharan Africa), the results of Bush's stalling action are crystal-clear: more dead people.

Demonstrably successful anti-AIDS programs run by governments, nongovernmental organizations, and mission hospitals are starved for funds. Fewer than 2% of AIDS sufferers in sub-Saharan Africa, including pregnant mothers, have access to anti-retroviral drugs that can save lives. The Global AIDS Fund, which is estimated to require some $10 billion a year, is already out of funds less than halfway through its first year, while the U.S. has supplied less than a tenth of the $3.5 billion a year that would be its fair share.

When the issue is saving African lives, the administration says "Let's wait." In contrast, there is no hesitation in shelling out more than $5 billion a year in new subsidies for rich U.S. farmers, or more than $6 billion a year to pay for suspending the estate taxes on the richest Americans.

President Bush has also recently announced a trip to Africa for next year and $20 million a year for African education (beginning in 2004). But public relations gestures and budget shell games do not save lives. The American public--and Congress--need to tell the President to change course.

(Salih Booker <sbooker@africapolicy.org> is executive director of Africa Action, which is based in Washington, DC, and is FPIF's (online at www.fpif.org) policy adviser on U.S.-Africa affairs.)


The Nation (http://www.thenation.com)

COMMENT | July 8, 2002

Aid--Let's Get Real

By Salih Booker & William Minter

The Africa trip of Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Irish rock star Bono produced a bumper harvest of photo ops and articles about aid to Africa. Unfortunately, media coverage was mired in the perennial and stale aid debate: Should we give more? Does it work?

If the O'Neill-Bono safari resulted in Washington finally paying more of its proper share for global health, education and clean water, that would be cause for applause. But any real change requires shifting the terms of debate. Indeed, the term "aid" itself carries the patronizing connotation of charity and a division of the world into "donors" and "recipients."

At the late June meeting in Canada of the rich countries known as the G8, aid to Africa will be high on the agenda. But behind the rhetoric, there is little new money--as evidenced by the just-announced paltry sum of US funding for AIDS--and even less new thinking. Despite the new mantra of "partnership," the current aid system, in which agencies like the World Bank and the US Treasury decide what is good for the poor, reflects the system of global apartheid that is itself the problem.

There is an urgent need to pay for such global public needs as the battles against AIDS and poverty by increasing the flow of real resources from rich to poor. But the old rationales and the old aid system will not do. Granted, some individuals and programs within that system make real contributions. But they are undermined by the negative effects of top-down aid and the policies imposed with it.

For a real partnership, the concept of "aid" should be replaced by a common obligation to finance international public investment for common needs. Rich countries should pay their fair share based on their privileged place in the world economy. At the global level, just as within societies, stacked economic rules unjustly reward some and punish others, making compensatory public action essential. Reparations to repair the damage from five centuries of exploitation, racism and violence are long overdue. Even for those who dismiss such reasoning as moralizing, the argument of self-interest should be enough. There will be no security for the rich unless the fruits of the global economy are shared more equitably.

As former World Bank official Joseph Stiglitz recently remarked in the New York Review of Books, it is "a peculiar world, in which the poor countries are in effect subsidizing the richest country, which happens, at the same time, to be among the stingiest in giving assistance in the world."

One prerequisite for new thinking about questions like "Does aid work?" is a correct definition of the term itself. Funds from US Agency for International Development, or the World Bank often go not for economic development but to prop up clients, dispose of agricultural surpluses, impose right-wing economic policies mislabeled "reform" or simply to recycle old debts. Why should money transfers like these be counted as aid? This kind of "aid" undermines development and promotes repression and violence in poor countries.

Money aimed at reaching agreed development goals like health, education and agricultural development could more accurately be called "international public investment." Of course, such investment should be monitored to make sure that it achieves results and is not mismanaged or siphoned off by corrupt officials. But mechanisms to do this must break with the vertical donor-recipient dichotomy. Monitoring should not be monopolized by the US Treasury or the World Bank. Instead, the primary responsibility should be lodged with vigilant elected representatives, civil society and media in countries where the money is spent, aided by greater transparency among the "development partners."

One well-established example of what is possible is the UN's Capital Development Fund, which is highly rated for its effective support for local public investment backed by participatory governance. Another is the new Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis & Malaria, which has already demonstrated the potential for opening up decision-making to public scrutiny. Its governing board includes both "donor" and "recipient" countries, as well as representatives of affected groups. A lively online debate among activists feeds into the official discussions.

Funding for agencies like these is now by "voluntary" donor contributions. This must change. Transfers from rich to poor should be institutionalized within what should ultimately be a redistributive tax system that functions across national boundaries, like payments within the European Union.

There is no immediate prospect for applying such a system worldwide. Activists can make a start, however, by setting up standards that rich countries should meet. AIDS activists, for example, have calculated the fair contribution each country should make to the Global AIDS Fund (see http://www.aidspan.org).

Initiatives like the Global AIDS Fund show that alternatives are possible. Procedures for defining objectives and reviewing results should be built from the bottom up and opened up to democratic scrutiny. Instead of abstract debates about whether "aid" works, rich countries should come up with the money now for real needs. That's not "aid," it's just a common-sense public investment.


This material is distributed by Africa Action (incorporating the Africa Policy Information Center, The Africa Fund, and the American Committee on Africa). Africa Action's information services provide accessible 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 human rights.

URL for this file: http://www.africafocus.org/docs02/g8-0206.php