Participation in fair global trade key for continent

Date: 27.01.05

Diseases such as malaria and AIDS, along with droughts, wars and being 'left out' of the world trade produce a 'silent tsunami' in Africa every month. David Cronin reports on the challenges facing the continent

So argues Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University professor, who oversaw the preparation of the recent Investing in Development report, described by its publisher, the United Nations, as the "most comprehensive strategy ever put forward for combating global poverty, hunger and disease". He rolls out the statistics: malaria kills 150,000 African children per month; Africa is the only continent where malnutrition is growing; more than half of its population suffers from an illness such as cholera or infant diarrhea caused by drinking dirty water; 12 million children in sub-Saharan Africa have lost both parents to AIDS.

The UN is pinning its hopes on the EU to take the lead in coming to Africa's assistance.

"The US is not interested in taking the lead," said one UN source.

So will the EU use 2005 to prove itself as Africa's best friend?

The British Prime Minister Tony Blair has promised to make Africa and climate change the two top priorities while the UK holds the presidency of the Group of Eight leading industrialised countries throughout 2005 and the presidency of the EU, from July to December.

The UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appears determined that the annual general assembly of his organisation in September must see rich countries making firm decisions to deliver on the Millennium Development Goals. These eight objectives include halving by 2015 the proportion of the world's people who live on less than a dollar a day.

There will also be a 'replenishment conference' for the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

But Europe will have to improve its record in keeping promises if it is to make a difference to Africa. So far Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Sweden are the only EU countries whose development aid budgets exceed 0.7% of national income. At the 2002 international conference on financing development in Monterrey, Mexico, all of the Union's states pledged to reach that threshold.

Gordon Brown, the UK's chancellor of the exchequer, wants the EU and G8 to back his plan for a so-called international finance facility. Under this, rich countries would pledge to double their total amount of aid to €39 billion per year for the next decade. These pledges would then be used as collateral for bonds issued in the international capital markets, unblocking funds for providing healthcare, education and debt relief.

Clearly, money is needed for Africa. Yet to ensure its population is lifted out of poverty in a lasting manner, they will have to benefit from a fairer system of global commerce.

This year will see a World Trade Organization ministerial in Hong Kong, where a deal on rewriting the rules of global commerce to benefit poorer nations is supposed to be concluded.

Separately, the European Commission will be studying what successor should apply to the Cotonou agreement. This accord, underpinning EU relations with the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) bloc, is to expire in 2007.

To replace it, the EU executive has begun negotiating a series of so-called economic partnership agreements with the ACP countries on a regional basis.

But EU-Africa relations are not just about economic calculations and they are complicated by a series of intractable political and security problems: the conflict in Darfur, the continuing civil war in central Africa, the stand-off with Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, the flows of would-be migrants to north Africa and the Mediterranean. EU-Africa relations are fraught with difficulties. Combating the silent tsunami will not be easy.

Hope and despair

• Despite the ongoing humanitarian crises caused by violence in Sudan and northern Uganda, Africa has become a more peaceful continent in the past few years. In 1999 one-fifth of Africans lived in countries afflicted by war. The proportion has dropped markedly since then;
• the New York-based International Rescue Committee estimated last month that 31,000 people still die every month in Congo, over 18 months after a truce was agreed;
• the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) predicts that unless aid from rich countries to Africa increases, the internationally agreed goal of reducing extreme poverty by half there will not be reached until 2147;
• sub-Saharan Africa has accounted for 70% of all the world's AIDS deaths in recent years. More than 35% of the populations of Botswana and Swaziland are HIV-positive;
• in the parts of Africa worst affected by AIDS, less than 4% of those requiring treatment with antiretroviral drugs have access to them. Yet while East Africa witnessed the first major spread of the HIV virus in the continent, rates of infection have fallen in parts of that region;
• a woman in sub-Saharan Africa has a one in 16 risk of dying during childbirth or pregnancy. By comparison, a north American woman has a one in 3,700 risk;
• more than 80% of Africa's population depend on agriculture for the livelihood. But a series of structural adjustment programmes set for Africa by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund has led many of its countries to cut or even scrap support for farmers, even though the EU and US continue their lavish farm subsidies.

Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University professor, who oversaw the preparation of the United Nations' Investing in Development report, said that fair trade was the key to giving Africa real assistance. Article says that the UN was pinning its hopes on the EU to take the lead in coming to Africa's assistance.