Heiligendamm – The Group of Eight powers agreed on Friday to pledge $60-billion (about R437-billion) to fight Aids and malaria in Africa on the final day of their annual summit.
South African President Thabo Mbeki and Chinese President Hu Jintao were among leaders from emerging nations who arrived on Germany’s Baltic Sea coast for discussions expected to focus on aid for the developing world.
Summit host German Chancellor Angela Merkel was to announce the plan to give $60-billion to Africa to combat Aids, malaria and tuberculosis, German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul said.
US President George Bush, who was sick and missed the first working session on Friday, unveiled the main thrust of the Aids initiative in May and the figure to be announced included $30-billion already earmarked by Washington, G8 sources said.

A White House official said Bush’s condition was “not serious” and that he was believed to have a stomach virus.
“President Bush is slightly indisposed this morning and will rejoin the working meeting as soon as he can,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy said after an hour-long discussion with Bush, who did not appear to talk with reporters.
After the G8 leaders struck a face-saving deal on climate change on Thursday, attention on the final day of the summit turned to how the richest nations can assist Africa and work with emerging powers from the so-called “Plus Five” group – Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa.
Leaders of the five nations held talks in Berlin on Thursday and said they wanted their “different capacities and interests” taken into consideration when tackling climate change, reflecting the view of China and India that imposing emissions cuts would restrict their booming economic growth.
The accord worked out by the G8 – Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States – was dismissed by environmental groups as an empty gesture but many observers hailed the pact for finally tying the United States to the goal of fighting global warming.
The G8 agreed to pursue major cuts to dangerous greenhouse gas pollution and said they would “seriously consider” the goal of halving global emissions by 2050.
Although Merkel said she was “very satisfied” with the deal, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair called it “a major, major step forward”, global warming campaigners said it came up far too short.
“The deal is clearly not enough to prevent dangerous climate change” said Daniel Mittler, climate policy advisor of Greenpeace International.
“The US isolation in refusing to accept binding emission cuts has become blindingly obvious at this meeting.”
But the UN’s top environmental official welcomed the agreement, saying it gave fresh impetus to talks for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol – the emissions-cutting pact which runs out in 2012 – and spells out that any deal should be global and come under the auspices of the UN.
“Very recently, (the United States) indicated that it was too early, it was premature to begin negotiations on a post-2012 climate change regime, so that’s a very clear shift,” said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The summit on Thursday also saw Russian President Vladimir Putin call for Russia and the United States to share a base to detect missile attacks.
The startling proposal was a bid to overcome a crisis over US plans to locate a missile defence system in eastern Europe.
Putin proposed after talks with Bush that the two former Cold War foes use a Russian base in Azerbaijan.
Russia has angrily opposed the US plan for a shield system in Poland and the Czech Republic and Putin had threatened to aim Russian missiles at European targets if it was deployed.

Link to IOL: G8 pledges R437-billion to Africa

G8 leaders meeting in Germany have vowed to deliver on pledges to Africa, and agreed a $60bn (£30bn) package for fighting Aids, malaria and TB.

Officials said half of that amount would come from the United States.

On the final day of their summit, they repeated a commitment made at the 2005 Gleneagles summit to double aid for Africa by the end of the decade.

But anti-poverty campaigners expressed disappointment, with Bob Geldof saying the outcome was a “total farce”.

The pledge followed a deal to seek “substantial” cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to tackle climate change.

US President George Bush missed the first few hours of business on Friday, suffering from a stomach complaint.

At the close of the summit, the G8 issued a number of statements on other topics, saying:

• It supported “further measures” against Iran if Tehran failed to stop its uranium enrichment programme
• It would back further action against Sudan if Khartoum failed to support international efforts to end the conflict in Darfur
• North Korea should stop testing nuclear-capable missiles and abandon all nuclear programmes
• It had failed to find a common position on the future status of Kosovo

Limited progress

Mr Bush announced last month that the US would dedicate $30bn to the fight against Aids, and diplomats confirmed that would make up half of the funding announced on Friday.

The BBC’s James Robbins, who is at the summit, says the pledge follows acknowledgement that the G8 members had not met their 2005 commitments.

They have now agreed to a declaration stressing their firm resolve to implement those commitments, and to keep Africa at the top of the agenda in Japan next year.

Specifically, after much wrangling, the eight agreed to make up the $500m shortfall in this year’s spending for education in Africa, our correspondent says.

But anti-poverty campaigners were unimpressed by the moves.

“This wasn’t serious, this was a total farce… I won’t have it spun as anything else except a farce,” Bob Geldof said.

He added that instead of re-committing to the promises made two years ago, the G8 leaders had to get serious and deliver.

But he praised UK Prime Minister Tony Blair for pursuing the anti-poverty campaign “to the point of exhaustion”.

Oxfam said only $3bn of the money was new.

UK development agency Tearfund said there was nothing in the G8 communique which could benefit trade in Africa, and the key issues of water and sanitation were not mentioned at all.

The Aids package was also criticised as inadequate.

“While lives will be saved with more money for Aids, this represents a cap on ambition that will ultimately cost millions more lives,” said Steve Cockburn of the Stop Aids Campaign.

Mr Blair said “immense progress” had been made in Germany. He said the G8 had reasserted the Gleneagles goals, “but the important thing is we have set out how we are going to do them”.

Most campaigners acknowledge that some progress has been made since Gleneagles.

Writing off the debt of 18 African nations has allowed Zambia, for instance, to expand free healthcare in rural areas.

But other commitments – like a sustained boost to aid, and the pledge to work towards a free trade deal that would remove tariffs on African exports to developed countries – have still not materialised.

Nigeria’s newly elected President Umaru Yar’Adua, one of six African leaders attending the summit on Friday, told BBC News he would be seeking better trade deals for Africa and increased efforts to resolve the crisis in Darfur.

Thursday saw leaders agree a climate change deal. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the G8 would negotiate within a UN framework to seek a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol by the end of 2009.

No mandatory target was set for the emissions cuts, but Mrs Merkel’s preference for a 50% cut by 2050 was included in the statement.

Link to BBC NEWS | Europe | G8 leaders reach $60bn Aids deal

UNITED NATIONS — Not a single country in sub-Saharan Africa is on target to meet UN goals of cutting extreme poverty by half, ensuring universal primary education and stemming the AIDS pandemic by 2015, a new UN report says.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon plans to ask leaders of the world’s richest countries meeting in Germany this week to step up aid to Africa so the targets could be achieved.

“Despite faster growth and strengthened institutions, the continent remains off track to meeting the world’s shared goals for fighting poverty in all its forms,” Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro told a news conference Wednesday.

While the proportion of people living on $1 a day has declined from 45.9% to 41.1% since 1999, the report says reaching the target of halving extreme poverty by 2015 requires that the current pace be nearly doubled.

Net aid to sub-Saharan Africa has increased by 2% in real terms since 2005, Migiro said, excluding Nigeria, which received exceptional debt relief this year. The report says donors need to accelerate their plans to increase assistance to maintain the credibility of their 2005 pledge to double aid to Africa by 2010.

The UN report, released at the midway point between the adoption of the goals by world leaders at a summit in 2000 and the 2015 target date, shows some progress in getting more youngsters to go to school but little progress on goals to reduce child and maternal mortality and to halt the AIDS pandemic.

Some sub-Saharan African countries have increased primary school enrollment from 57% in 1999 to 70% in 2005, even with a rapid population growth. But Migiro said “more investments in the sector are needed to meet the goal of primary education” for all children.

According to the new UN statistics, child mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa have fallen marginally from 185 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 116 per 1,000 live births in 2005.

A woman in Africa has a 1-in-16 chance of dying in childbirth or from complications in pregnancy, compared with the likelihood of 1-in-3,800 of dying in developed countries, she said.

The report also says the number of people dying from AIDS continues to mount, reaching 2 million in 2006 in sub-Saharan Africa. New HIV cases are rising faster than the rate at which new treatment is offered, it says.

Link to African countries fail to meet goals

HEILIGENDAMM, Germany (CNN) — Leaders of the world’s eight major industrialized nations will end their summit Friday with a pledge to help nations on the world’s poorest continent.

The heads of six African nations will join G8 leaders, and a $60 billion pledge is expected to help fight AIDS and other diseases, according to Reuters.

However, an advocacy organization working to eradicate poverty and AIDS in Africa said that a pledge of an extra $25 billion dollars made at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, two years ago has not been kept. At the end of last year, only $2.3 billion of that promised amount, which is to be paid by 2010, had been delivered, said Jamie Drummond, executive director of DATA — or Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa.

“The G8 as a whole in 2006 did about half of the aid levels they promised — just under half. They’re planning for 2007 to do just under a third of what they promised. So there’s a pattern of off-track behavior,” Drummond said.

According to DATA, only Britain and Japan are meeting their promises.

Canada, the United States and Germany are slipping behind, and France and Italy are at the bottom.

No hard goals on climate change

On Thursday, the G8 leaders agreed to a communique under which nations will stabilize, then reduce greenhouse gas emissions and will “seriously consider” plans by the European Union, Canada and Japan for halving emissions by 2050.

The leaders “accepted the latest scientific evidence” of the dangers of global warming but set no targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. (Full story)

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country has the rotating G8 presidency for 2007, had pressed for firm targets, but claimed she was “very satisfied” with Thursday’s outcome.

The leaders accepted the latest scientific evidence of the danger of inaction, she said.

The G8 nations also agreed to work through the United Nations for a successor to the protocol.

Bush, Putin meet amid tensions

Threatening to overshadow the G8 summit was a dispute between the U.S. and Russia over a U.S. missile defense system. On Thursday, U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to cooperate on missile-defense after a surprise offer by Putin to use an existing radar station that Russia rents in neighboring Azerbaijan. (Full story)

Bush said the men agreed to share ideas, and involve officials from the U.S. State Department, Department of Defense and military.

The feud had angered protesters, saying it detracted from priority issues, such as poverty in Africa and climate change.

The row also angered pop cultures figures such as the rock star Bono, long an advocate for international aid to Africa.

In an exclusive interview with CNN, Bono said the fact that “people love a good cockfight” had shifted attention from Africa to the Bush-Putin spat. (Watch Bono say the G8 has failed to keep its promises on Africa aid )

Link to G8 finale: Africa in the spotlight – CNN.com

HEILIGENDAMM, Germany,(Xinhua) — The summit of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized nations started Wednesday evening near the German Baltic resort of Heiligendamm, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel hosting an informal dinner for the leaders of the world’s major economic powers.

The dinner was held in a 14th-century palace on the Hohen Luckow estate, some 25 km southeast of the summit venue in Heiligendamm.

Most of the leaders arrived in Heiligendamm on Wednesday. U.S. President George W. Bush flew in Heiligendamm on Tuesday, who is on a European tour.

The three-day G8 summit is expected to focus on climate change, the development in Africa, the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization, the U.S. plan of deploying a missile defense shield in Central Europe.

The leaders may also talk about Iran’s nuclear program and the security situation in the Middle East.

The G8 groups Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.

Besides talks among themselves, the leaders of the world’s major economic powers are scheduled to have two outreach sessions, one with five major developing countries — Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa, and the other with African countries — Algeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa.

Before the start of the event, Bush was busy with meeting fellow G8 leaders, including Merkel and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, on Wednesday.

Following a meeting with Merkel, Bush told reporters he has a “strong desire” to work with other world leaders for a post-Kyoto Protocol agreement designed to tackle climate change, one of the most controversial issues to be discussed at G8 summit.

“I come with a strong desire to work with you (Merkel) on a post-Kyoto agreement about how we can achieve major objectives. One, of course, is the reduction of greenhouse gases. Another is to become more energy independent — in our case, from crude oil from parts of the world where we’ve got some friends, and sometimes we don’t have friends,” he said.

The United States, the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter, remains committed to reduce greenhouse gas and raise energy efficiency, he said.

 Merkel said she expected “intensive debate” during the summit on the issue of climate change.

The United States has been under attacks from Europe and environmental activists for not having taking stronger measures to tackle climate change.

Germany, which holds the rotating G8 presidency, has called for actions to limit the rise in global temperatures to two degrees Celsius this century and to cut carbon emissions by 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

The United States voiced “fundamental opposition” to the German proposal.

Bush has announced a separate plan, calling on 15 of the world’s biggest greenhouse producers to meet and agree on long-term goals by the end of 2008.

The United States, which has refused to ratify Kyoto Protocol, remains opposed to mandatory targets, citing that environmental protection cannot come at the price of hurting economic growth.

After their talks in Heiligendamm, Bush and Abe said they agreed that both countries would work jointly for an effective and flexible framework concerning the issue of climate change.

“On climate change …We agreed that Japan and the United States would be working together for the creation of an effective framework which is flexible, and that we would be cooperating to achieve that end in the future,” Abe told reporters.

Earlier in the day, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso urged Washington to take stronger measures to tackle climate change.

 Europe has yet to see more “contribution” by the United States in the fight against climate change, Barroso told reporters beforethe start of the G8 summit.

On another contentious issue — the U.S. plan of deploying a missile defense shield in Central Europe, Bush tried Wednesday to tone down the tense words of war between himself and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Bush said no military response is necessary even after Russia threatened to retarget Europe if the United States continues with its missile defense plan.

“Russia is not an enemy,” Bush told reporters here.

“There needs to be no military response because we’re not at war with Russia. … Russia is not a threat. Nor is the missile defense we’re proposing a threat to Russia,” he said.

The United States plans to place a radar system in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in neighboring Poland in the name of defending possible attacks from Iran.

Russia has accused Washington of raising a new arms race in theregion, which Washington denies

Security is extremely tightened around Heiligendamm, but anti-globalization protests stole the show of the day.

The German government has mobilized more than 16,000 policemen to be stationed around Heiligendamm in a bid to have a perfect G8 summit. A 12-km steel fence have been built around the venue.

Nevertheless, some 6,000 anti-globalization protesters evaded police road-blocks Wednesday morning and approached the fence around the summit venue in defiance of a police ban.

Later, German police used tear-gas and water cannons to disperse protesters at the fence, and also off Highway 105 which runs past Heiligendamm at a distance of about 6 km. Police said they took the actions after being stoned by some protesters.

One of the protest leaders told German TV Wednesday that a sit-down blockade around the summit compound would continue until the end of the G8 Summit.

Link to Xinhua – English

Africa is back on the G8 agenda this week, at the exclusive resort of Heiligendamm, for the first time since Gleneagles in 2005. But no one is quite sure why, least of all the German public. Despite Bono’s and Bob’s best efforts, with a concert planned on Thursday and Bob guest-editing the biggest-selling German newspaper Bilt Zeitung last week, the Your Voice Against Poverty campaign has not caught the public imagination as Make Poverty History did in the UK in 2005.

German aid agencies are church-based and less orientated to campaigning, while Bono’s rock recruits from the German music scene keep their distance from politicians for fear of damaging their credibility – but in the process lose their leverage over politicians eager for celebrity endorsement. Perhaps even the absence of colonial guilt (Namibia was Germany’s only, brief, experience of African empire) has had some role to play.

Meanwhile, having Africa on the agenda has been a headache for the German government. Their concern is that the only story on the G8 and Africa will be about broken promises and how delivery of the 2005 pledges is disastrously off track. In the past few weeks, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has been looking for a good news story – an announcement of an increase in German aid of around €2bn (£1.35bn) is likely – to mask the fact that the G8’s agreement in Gleneagles is in danger of falling apart. It has gone to the wire, with still no agreement on how to word the commitment to the 2005 deal. More “sherpa” meetings of officials will be held today and tomorrow ahead of the summit opening on Wednesday.

What was hailed as the most ambitious G8 commitment ever made is now looking dangerously close to a sham. It was agreed at Gleneagles to double aid to reach $50bn by 2010. But instead of aid rising, it actually fell in 2006 for the first time since 1997. The figures have been massaged to look better than they should by adding in massive debt relief for Iraq and Nigeria. Strip those out, and aid fell from five of the G7 countries (Russia is not included in the aid statistics) in the year after they had made historic commitments to increase it. At the current rate, there will be a shortfall of $30bn by 2010; more than half of what was promised in 2005 shows no sign of being delivered. G8 promises aren’t worth the paper they are printed on.

So who are the villains? Well, it’s a change from the usual story of US infamy because the core of this problem lies in Europe. It was European countries which made the biggest promises and which are proving so lamentably bad at implementing them. That’s why what happens in Heiligendamm – the last G8 in Europe for several years – is so crucial. If Germany comes up with some money then it will pile the pressure on the worst offenders – France and, above all, Italy. Aid fell in the latter by 16% last year and unless something changes fast, it will deliver a paltry $1.4bn of the $9.5bn it promised by 2010. France’s shortfall is running at 50% of its 2010 aid promise. Even the UK, which prides itself on its exemplary commitment to the developing world, is falling behind. If European countries got their act together, the Gleneagles agreement would be back on track.

It is hardly the most compelling rallying cry for campaigners – that victory counts not as new advances but as a reiteration of two-year-old promises. In fact, campaigners and aid agencies are in a bit of a dilemma. Pump up the outrage at the G8’s duplicity and they risk disillusionment from all those who thought Make Poverty History’s mass engagement was a triumphant success. What good does it do to point out that even after all the celebrities, the concerts, the media saturation and the white wristbands, progress is still achingly slow, edging forward and too often slipping back? It leaves a bitter taste that Make Poverty History might become by 2010 another example of the failure of mass public protest alongside the 2003 Stop the War march.

Harsh though it may be to say so, the dilemma is partly of Make Poverty History’s making. It was a bold bid to inspire a generation’s engagement with Africa but to do so, it sold itself as an instant solution. It made no attempt to manage expectations – on the contrary, it encouraged them to soar beyond any kind of realistic fulfilment. The desperate suffering and poverty of Africa could be solved. Campaigners always strike a precarious balance between optimism and realism, but the balance in 2005 was on the former. After Gleneagles, it declared victory and demobilised the troops.

What Make Poverty History didn’t even attempt to explain to the generation it was trying to recruit was that campaigns on global justice have to be counted in decades not months, let alone weeks. It took 25 years for the debt campaign to achieve some measure of debt cancellation in 2005, and that battle is not over. Poor countries are still paying the rich world $100m a day in debt repayments. Countries signed up to 0.7% of gross domestic product in aid in 1970; the UK won’t achieve it until 2013, 43 years later.

Nor did Make Poverty History explain how development is a complex business. If we struggle to achieve public sector reform in the UK, why should it be any easier to deliver effective schools and hospitals in Africa? It’s not just about giving money. An uncomfortable gap in what aid can achieve has opened up between the campaigners and the policy experts on the ground. The latter complain that Africa is drowning in a plethora of global initiatives (100 on health alone), all of which gobble up the time and attention of under-resourced governments. The managerial plague of targets dictated by western donors is in danger of choking the kind of long-term investment African public services need. Donors want results to sell to their electorates and supporters – numbers of children vaccinated, bums on school benches – but often what’s first needed is stronger infrastructure such as good administrators, teachers trained or midwives paid properly.

Donor disillusionment is a real danger because it will sap the determination to tackle what will be the biggest campaigning challenge of the next half century – climate justice. In Africa, it’s estimated that 232,000 square miles of cultivatable land will be ruined, and up to a third of Africa’s population could face water shortages by 2020. Africa is the continent that will be hit first and hardest by climate change. The World Bank puts adaptation costs for developing countries at $41bn a year, yet so far only $48m has been contributed. The issue is making its first appearance at a G8 summit this week. But if it is taking nearly half a century to reach the 0.7% aid commitment, there’s no guessing how long it will take – how many marches, rock concerts and celebrities not yet born – not just to get pledges on climate justice from the mouths of G8 leaders but to get them delivered.

Link to Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Bob Geldof too has a part to play in the G8’s broken promises to Africa

Every year, about this time, the moneyed world teases Africa with promises of solidarity and enhanced economic support.

It is the time of the annual Group of Eight (G8) wealthy nations summit and i t has become Africa’s season of hope. That hope was never higher than in 2005, when incoming G8 President Tony Blair put Africa near the top of the agenda for the Gleneagles summit and secured a commitment to double aid to Africa to 50-billion a year by 2010.

Pop stars Bono and Bob Geldof, who have championed Africa’s cause for more than a decade, set up a monitoring organisation, Data, to track delivery. Data reported recently that G8 aid had increased at less than half the rate needed to meet the Gleneagles promise .

African Monitor, another independent organisation that tracks aid to the continent, said this week that aid from the 22 members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development had fallen from 106- billion in 2005 to 103-billion in 2006.

This year there is again reason to expect a substantial focus on Africa when leaders gather in the German Baltic resort of Heiligendamm, from Wednesday. Host, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who takes over the presidency from Russia’s Vladimir Putin, has made the fight against African poverty one of her eight agenda items for the summit.

In addition, the leaders are committed in terms of their Gleneagles pledge to conduct a two-yearly review of progress on their promise to double aid to the developing world to 100-billion a year by 2010, with half of the total going to Africa.

As with every meeting since Africa was first invited as an observer in 2001, other items threaten to dominate the agenda to Africa’s cost. Climate change and the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran will feel more immediate to the those in the northern hemisphere than unkept promises to the poor South.

Beating the deadline for agreement in the Doha Round of World Trade Organisation talks is sure to be a priority, but the “developmental” label that settlement was meant to carry already looks tattered. The compromises are likely to be more to Africa’s cost than to its advantage.

Aids, though of overwhelming concern to Africa, could invite a treatment-focused response and not the broader poverty-linked strategy that Africa needs.

The hard talking tends to be about issues of concern to the G8 economies. This year, they also face the additional challenge of Russia’s increasing belligerence. Putin’s tone has begun to echo the Cold War era in East-West relations. His G8 partners are worried and this is likely to overshadow African poverty.

The good news is that Blair, who retires on June 27, will be trying to consolidate the African focus as part of his legacy and Merkel has shown she intends to pick up the baton.

Some African representation was consolidated at the Gleneagles meeting, where the leaders established what they call the G8+5 — the industrialised leaders sitting with China, Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa. Though he heads the smallest of those emerging economies, President Thabo Mbeki now attends by right rather than at the whim of a G8 presidential invitation.

Mojanko Gumbi, Mbeki’s legal adviser and closest aide was able to push for the prominent inclusion of African issues including Aids, good governance and peace and security, at this summit.

The presidents of Algeria, Senegal, Ghana and Nigeria will also attend, but none will enjoy Mbeki’s access. It will be up to Mbeki to reaffirm Africa’s commitment to improving governance as promised by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development and the African Peer Review Mechanism.

Nepad was the step change that encouraged the G8 leaders to adopt an Africa Action Plan at their 2002 summit in Kananaskis in Canada.

However, there has been little action on G8 promises since then. These range from assistance to bring Africa into the digital world to industrial and trade development. The developed countries’ pledge to curb their own farm subsidies and to open markets to African agriculture languish in the stalled WTO talks.

So although Mbeki is unlikely to return laden, he surely will not come home empty-handed.

Link to Sunday Times – Article

BERLIN, GERMANY (Reuters) — African poverty has climbed to the top of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s agenda for a Group of Eight (G-8) summit in Heiligendamm next month amid concern pledges to help the continent remain unfulfilled.

The summit meeting will be held June 6-8 in the Baltic coast city.

The G-8 is composed of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.

Merkel’s agenda harks back to the partnership forged in Kananaskis, Canada, in 2002. At that time, the Africa Action Plan was adopted, which set out specific commitments in support of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

Five founder members of the NEPAD Group — Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa — will attend the June summit as will African Union president Ghana.

At their meeting in Gleneagles, Britain, in 2005, the G-8 agreed to a Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) that envisioned totally canceling debts.

The heads of state also agreed on a doubling of development aid by 2010. This pledge will be reiterated amid claims from aid organizations that some G-8 nations are lagging far behind on their commitments.

In addition to existing programs designed to cut indebtedness and boost financial aid, Merkel’s agenda includes strengthening dialogue with African nations.

Her government wants to focus on four main focal points: good governance, sustainable investment, peace and security and a strengthening of the health system. The latter includes measures to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

Germany spent $10.35 billion in 2006 on developmental cooperation compared with $10.08 billion the year earlier. The United States reduced its payments in the same period by more than 20 percent to $22.74 billion.

Link to Germany puts African poverty on front burner – CNN.com

WERDER-HAVEL, Germany (AP) — The Group of Eight called for more aid, increased debt relief and responsible lending to Africa, vowing the world’s wealthy nations would not forget their pledges to the poverty-stricken continent.

Wrapping up two days of talks by finance officials under tight security at a resort on Lake Schwielowsee, officials from Germany, Italy, Britain, Japan, Canada, Russia, the United States, and France called for improved financial oversight and said Africa would be a central point of next month’s wider G8 summit in Heiligendamm.

“We reaffirm our commitment to meeting our responsibilities as donors, in particular the importance of delivering on our aid commitments,” the group said in its statement.

With improved financial management by African nations and increased investment, there was a need for “special attention to particular needs of post conflict and fragile states,” it added.

Attendees included Gordon Brown, Britain’s next prime minister, and U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt, who came instead of his boss, Henry Paulson.

Advocates for Africa said the summit did not focus enough on ensuring the continent receive funding pledged to it, and urged a more thorough accounting next month when the leaders of the G8 meet on the Baltic Sea coast. “The G8 finance ministers have shown collective amnesia, choosing to forget their promises to Africa,” said Max Lawson of Oxfam International. “(German) Chancellor (Angela) Merkel has got just 18 days to show true leadership, berate her fellow leaders into action and avoid embarrassment in the eyes of the world and the denial of hope for millions. The German G8 must not be remembered as the summit of shame.”

Two years ago, a British-hosted G8 summit focused on forgiving debt to Africa and helping it run itself better in a bid to lift the continent from poverty.

But critics said that pledges of $67 billion a year in aid had fallen short.

“The G8 must start writing checks that don’t bounce; checks that their African counterparts can actually cash,” said Oliver Buston, the European director of Debt AIDS Trade Africa, or DATA, which was formed by political activist and U2 singer Bono.

“Heiligendamm is the last chance for the G8 leaders to rescue their reputation,” he said.

German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck and his G8 colleagues were joined by officials from Ghana, Cameroon, Mozambique, South Africa and Nigeria, and by Donald Kaberuka, president of the African Development Bank for the meeting outside Berlin.

Some G8 countries had expressed worries that cheap loans from China, which needs access to raw material such as oil and copper, could lead to another debt crisis on the continent.

Kimmitt said that good governance remained “critical” for economic development, along with maintaining sustainable debt levels in the poorest countries.

His remarks echoed that of the communiqué, which called attention to the quality of public investment to ensure debt sustainability.

“Not only does the concessionality of lending matter, but the returns on investment as well,” an oblique reference to Chinese lending practices in Africa.

In the G8’s draft action plan, finance officials also expressed support for the British-led Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which requires governments to declare their tax receipts and royalty payments from natural resources companies, and those companies to declare how much they pay governments.

In the past, revenues from natural resources have been stolen by African leaders and their associates, depriving their governments of revenues while loading them up with debts.

But the G8 action plan stresses that African governments themselves bear most of the responsibility for borrowing wisely.

After the meeting ended, Steinbrueck singled out China and said he wanted to address the issues of responsible lending at the meeting of the Group of 20 countries in Cape Town, South Africa, later this year. That discussion should prevent China from relaunching “what we wanted to break with our debt relief” to African countries and ensure that “we can avoid the risk of such a debt cycle once more.” Still, Steinbrueck said he would not “want to go as far as to say all African countries understand our concern.”

A German paper on Good Financial Governance in Africa prepared for the G8 meeting said China should abide by limits laid down by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank when it is lending to African countries.

“It is now important to avoid the creation of new, unsustainable debt,” the document had said, noting the limits set by the IMF’s and World Bank’s framework for debt sustainability. “All creditors should stick to this,” the German document said, adding that call is in particular aimed at China “which mostly factors out aspects of good governance when awarding loans, such as to Sudan and Angola.”

Link to Description of Selected News

G8 finance ministers have warned against giving African countries cheap loans that they will struggle to repay.

But in statements issued at the end of a two-day meeting in Germany, the group stressed African countries must manage their own finances responsibly.

Attendees included Britain’s next prime minister Gordon Brown and Robert Kimmitt, US Deputy Treasury Secretary.

The G8 countries include the US, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia.

Ministers said Africa would be a focal point of the wider G8 summit next month in Heiligendamm, on the Baltic sea coast.

They reinforced their commitment to deliver on aid commitments and called for responsible investment in the continent.

Last chance

Germany singled out China, which relies on access to raw materials to feed its fast-growing economy, as one of the biggest risks to mineral-rich Africa.

“It is critical that both borrowers and creditors agree on approach to debt sustainability that prevents the re-emergence of debt distress,” said Mr Kimmitt, standing in for Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

The world’s eight wealthiest countries have pledged to boost annual aid to $50bn (£25bn) a year by 2010, but critics say they are falling well short of this promise.

“Heiligendamm is the last chance for the G8 leaders to rescue their reputation,” said Oliver Buston, European director of Debt Aids Trade Africa.

In other business, the group of ministers reaffirmed the need to be “vigilant” with regard to the potential risks associated with hedge funds, but as was widely expected, no code of conduct was released.

Link to BBC NEWS | Business | G8 ministers put Africa in focus