By IPS Correspondents
NAIROBI, Apr 28 2005 (IPS)

Calls for debt relief to be awarded to African countries have become “de rigueur” in non-governmental circles and a good many news publications. But does the matter crop up during dinner conversations across the continent? Is it sufficiently important to crowd out sports talk amongst people riding mini-bus taxis on their way to work?

That’s exactly what ‘Get on Board’ is discovering at the moment. Under this initiative, a group of activists aboard a 14-seater bus is traveling around Africa, collecting the views of rural and urban populations on Africa’s debt problem, international aid and trade rules.

The bus left South Africa for Mozambique and Malawi on Apr. 1 this year, and is currently in Tanzania. It is expected to arrive in Kenya May 1, after which it will travel to Uganda, then France via ship.

Once in Europe, the bus will set out for the United Kingdom (UK), reaching Scotland in time for the Group of Eight (G8) summit that is scheduled to take place in the town of Gleneagles on Jul. 6.

The initiative is the brainchild of ActionAid, an international agency headquartered in Johannesburg that promotes development.

“Through the ‘Get on Board’ bus initiative, we are providing a platform for African populations, including the poor, to articulate their voices on cancellation of debts which have thrown Africa to deeper levels of poverty,” said Asenath Omwega, regional director of ActionAid.

A documentary will be compiled from the insights and opinions gathered by those on the bus, and presented at the G8 summit to convince leaders to “get on board” the poverty relief drive.

The G8 comprises the world’s leading industrialized countries – Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States – which meet annually. This year, it is being chaired by Britain, which has promised to use its position to lobby the group about issues affecting Africa. ‘Get on Board’ forms part of a campaign by the ‘Global Call to Action Against Poverty’ (GCAP).

GCAP describes itself as an umbrella group for hundreds of organisations – including ActionAid – that are calling on global leaders to take a variety of steps towards poverty reduction. These include increasing aid, ensuring that these funds are properly used for development, and canceling the debt of the world’s poorest countries.

“We want to push these (G8) leaders and their governments to…make elimination of poverty a priority on their agenda during their summit. One way of doing this is by writing off all debts,” Njeri Mwangi-Kinyoho, a coordinator for GCAP, told journalists this week in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.

“The debt that Africa owes is totally unsustainable. We are demanding 100 percent cancellation. This money should be spent on improving the quality of life of Africans.”

According to the UK-based Jubilee 2000 Coalition, which groups organisations that promote development, Africa currently owes foreign creditors 353 billion dollars. Analysts say debt repayments have hampered the continent’s progress by absorbing funds that should have been spent on social services.

“Kenya uses 40 percent of her annual revenue to service debt. This is more than the annual budget for health and education combined. How moral is this?” Ababu Namwamba, an official from Kenya’s ‘Cancel Debts for the Child Campaign’, said last week (Apr. 21) during a forum held in Nairobi.

The meeting was organised by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, ActionAid and the World Alliance for Citizen Participation (CIVICUS) – a Johannesburg-based non-governmental group that promotes grass roots involvement in the political and economic life of countries. Debt relief has also been recommended by the Commission for Africa (CfA), a body established by the British government in 2004 to investigate how best to end poverty on the continent.

In March this year, the 17-member commission issued a report on its findings that will be discussed at the G8 gathering in Gleneagles.

The CfA has also called for aid flows to Africa to be tripled to 50 billion dollars a year during the next decade, and for wealthy states to set aside a further 10 billion dollars annually to fight HIV/AIDS.

According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, more than 60 percent of people who have contracted HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa, even though the region contains about 10 percent of the global population.

In addition, the CfA recommends an end to agricultural subsidies that price Africa’s farmers out of the market, and the repatriation of funds looted from the government coffers of African nations.

However, some have underlined that home-grown initiatives are also essential if Africa is to haul itself out of the poverty trap. “Africa needs to improve on governance,” a speaker at the Nairobi forum, Ugandan professor Dani Nabudere, said. “The whole debt problem arises when there are no policies to make presidents and ministers accountable to their people.” He also bemoaned the “lack of instruments to check on how and what the donor aid has been used for, and whether the aid was necessary in the first place”.

At present, the signs in this regard are not positive for Kenya, where a chorus of condemnation from donors about alleged government corruption has been growing ever-louder in recent months.

In addition, an effort last year by Omingo Magara, the former chairman of the Parliamentary Accounts Committee, to have an act passed to regulate acquisition of aid and administration of debt in the public interest, was defeated.

At present, Kenya’s finance minister has sole discretion on these matters.

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