POLITICS-AFRICA: Arab Leaders Steal the Show At G8 Summit

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - By Moyiga Nduru

JOHANNESBURG, Jun 11 2004 (IPS) - Kenyan civil society activist Edward Oyugi says Africa’s relations with the developed world amount to the continent holding out a begging bowl. But, African leaders insist they have a partnership with wealthy nations – one based on investment in return for good governance.

The claim came under discussion again this week during a meeting of the Group of Eight (G8) – an association of the world’s most powerful economies. The group includes the United States, Germany, Italy, France, Britain, Canada, Japan and Russia.

South African President Thabo Mbeki, along with five colleagues from other parts of the continent, were also included in the talks – held at the luxurious resort of Sea Island, which lies off the coast of the U.S. state of Georgia.

What they brought home from the gathering was a plan for the G8 to help train and equip some 75,000 peacekeepers and police by 2010 – officers who will be deployed to meet security needs in Africa.

They also emerged with an appeal by G8 leaders for the United Nations to stem the carnage in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, where pro-government Arab militias are carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against black Africans.

“We look to the United Nations to lead the international effort to avert a major disaster and will work together to achieve this end,” said the leaders in a statement.

However, the Islamic regime in Sudan claims the West is to blame for Darfur’s agony.

Addressing about 300 Sudanese and Egyptian intellectuals in Egypt’s capital, Cairo, on Thursday (Jun. 10), First Vice-President Ali Osman Taha said millions of dollars had been kept from Sudan by economic sanctions. This block on funding, he added, had prevented the development of Darfur, thereby disposing the region to conflict.

The sanctions were imposed after President Omar Bashir, who seized power from the elected government of Prime Minister Sadiq al Mahdi in 1989, allowed Sudan to become a haven for Islamic terrorists such as Osama bin Laden.

The European Union agreed Thursday to give 12 million dollars to support the quick deployment of an African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in Sudan.

The AU has also announced plans to send 90 monitors to Darfur, while Mbeki is dispatching 10 high-ranking army officers to the region. But, “It is not clear how effective 90 monitors – 60 military and 30 civilians – will be in an area the size of France, where daily killings and rapes are still being reported,” Amnesty International said in a statement last week.

The AU already has peacekeepers in Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire and Burundi.

The G8 leaders also said they would extend the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative (HIPC), which was due to end this year, until the end of 2006.

In addition, they called on scientists to hasten the development of an AIDS vaccine. Australian researchers are currently testing a vaccine which controls the amount of HIV in people living with the virus, by boosting their immune systems. Washington has promised to give 500 million dollars to fund this research.

That’s good news for a continent where an estimated 26.6 million people have contracted HIV – and where about 3.2 million new infections occurred last year alone, according to the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS.

However, the amount of attention accorded to Africa became clearer when Mbeki told journalists that African leaders had spent only two hours with their G8 counterparts. Time constraints prevented them from discussing other issues of importance, he added.

All in all, the Middle East seems to have stolen the show. During the summit, U.S. President George W. Bush met Iraq’s new leader – Ghazi al-Yawar – and King Abdullah Hussein of Jordan. In the course of their talks, Bush again put forward his vision of exporting democracy to the Middle East, using Iraq as a stepping stone.

Mbeki was invited to Sea Island along with Presidents Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria, John Kufour of Ghana, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda.

This is the fourth year in a row that African leaders have been invited to the high-powered gathering, in the context of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

African academics and civil society activists have questioned the West’s commitment to NEPAD, which proposes good governance on the part of African states in return for investment. Instead, they say the continent should improve its tax collection system to raise the 64 billion dollars a year that NEPAD is seeking from the G8.

Others have also criticised African leaders for not engaging their fellow citizens sufficiently on NEPAD.

“It’s a dream by African leaders that they refused to share with African people. Instead, they rushed to share it with outsiders who do not wish Africa well,” Oyugi, told a workshop organised by the African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD) in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, late last month.

In May, a group of African business representatives meeting in Maputo, Mozambique, complained about the lack of information on NEPAD. They also highlighted the fact that not a single firm had invested in any of the 20 projects identified by NEPAD to jump start the continent’s growth.