For a week in May (13-20 May 2007), I was travelling in Germany like a politician on a whistle stop campaign. My journey began in Nairobi and ended in Bonn with stops in between at Hamburg, Rostock and the beautiful Gothe town of Weimar.
No, this is not Election year in Germany and even if it is I could not campaign for a seat in the Bundestang or the European parliament since I am neither a German nor a European citizen. But it was still a campaign of a sort. I was participating in various pre-G8 Summit activities and events that were organized by the UN Millennium Campaign in Germany in partnership with other civil society and NGO groups, the catholic church, and even elements in the private sector that support the global campaign against poverty.
Many of my colleagues doubted whether the trip was a very good use of my time and energy. One cynical colleague even suggested that perhaps I was going just for the trip! But another colleague, who knew that this could not be the case and that I certainly 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 was not without foundation. My colleagues and the many others who are exasperated with this annual jamboree that is the G8 do know the significance of this 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 also disproportionately use, misuse and abuse global resources. Compared to this stark reality, the rest of us look like poor tenants living on the fringes of the real estate of the G8 countries. Based on painful lessons from previous G8 summits, their expectation is “not to expect anything at all” and save themselves the disappointment. Although they do believe that this most powerful club of world leaders can take action against global problems, from poverty to pollution, they can no longer hold their breath that it will.
I call these non-expectations the post-Gleneagles downward spiral. The 2005 G8 summit in the Scottish town raised high hopes that the richer countries of the world were ready, willing and able to stop treating the overwhelming majority of the poorest people of the world not as illegal tenants, but as fellow human beings on a shared estate- an estate that respects our common humanity with dignity and the fair use and allocation of global resources. Old commitments ( such as those contained in the Millennium Declaration and then translated into the MDGs) were renewed, while additional promises were made to fast track an end to extreme poverty and hunger, reform global financial and trading regimes to facilitate fair trade, write off the odious debts of poor countries, and improve both the quantity, quality and the effectiveness of Aid. 2005 was even declared ‘The year of Africa’ (thanks to the now discredited and soon to be EX-PM, Tony Blair of Britain) amidst the optimism that the world would stop wronging Africa and start playing fair and that African leaders would improve governance and increase accountability to their own citizens.
Initially there was a buzz of activities that potentially could have shut up the critics and cynics. Debt relief was offered to 14 African countries that were already in the HIPC initiative. Non-HIPC African countries like Nigeria had some of their debt cancelled as they paid off the rest (however, Nigeria paid back more to Britain in 2005/2006 than the total of British global Aid – therefore raising the question: who is aiding whom?). But the majority of the African countries that are 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 it to current favourite leaders, withholding it from those no longer in favour, coordinating it inefficiently, and not meeting promises on its delivery- are still in practice. On hindsight, the Aid increase was revealed as paper money and mostly debt relief, and even then Nigeria and Iraq alone swallowed a large proportion of it. However, 2005 represented a high point in public awareness about these issues, both in the G8 countries and globally, forcing political leaders to take note and recommit themselves to doing something. Today that something still lags behind expectations. Aid levels are now falling because G8 leaders are backsliding and retreating from their commitments. Yet in the troika stool of Trade, Debt and Aid, Aid is the weakest link though admittedly the most visible politically. We can double, triple or even quadruple Aid, but without further significant movement on trade and universal debt relief, the poorest countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America will continue to be trapped in a vicious cycle of structural poverty that is induced and reproduced by the unequal terms of global trading regimes imposed by the richer countries through IMF/WB EU, and the WTO. But these same poor countries can trade their way fairly to prosperity.
Aid is like emergency Aid at the scene of an accident. It is often timely and well appreciated. But that does not mean that the wounded should not go for a proper medical examination. For long term development, it is not Aid that these African countries need, but a fair trading system and the 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 by the EU, G8 and now increasingly China. Therefore Africa cannot be aided out of poverty without a very fundamental reform in the unequal trade system that is rigged against our producers, workers, professionals and domestic companies. Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly, this is the one area where the G8 countries, the EU and the USA have continued to conspire against the poorest peoples of the world in the stagnant, so called Development Round – Doha- negotiations at the WTO.
If the G8 wants to renew its own citizens’ faith in its leadership and convince poor countries that they actually mean what they say, the answer is very simple: Honour your own commitments. Africa does not need any new promises but the fulfillment of old ones- both the ones we made to ourselves through the AU/NEPAD/MDGs and those promised to us by the G8. I explained this everywhere I spoke last week, to both my German friends and to the other activists who also care about international development, many of who are as frustrated with their leaders’ broken promises as we are doubly disappointed with ours and the G8.
The next G8 summit in the East German town of Heiligendamm (I am told that it is the native region of German Chancellor Merkel) should not be business as usual but business in the most unusual way. That means two things- No more new promises but honour all the old ones. That will be a truly welcome surprise.
Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa.
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