Changing a continent: Africa: Promises, pain and progress

It will be exactly one year tomorrow that Tony Blair's Commission for Africa - starring Bob Geldof, Gordon Brown and assorted African luminaries - issued its report. It set out the intellectual underpinning for the demands of Live8 and formed a campaigner's blueprint for what was required of the rich nations at the Gleneagles G8 summit. But one year on, did it all make any difference?

A year is a long time in the life of a hungry African peasant, for the wheels of international action turn exceedingly slowly. And the past 12 months have thrown up as many questions as they have answered.

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What the year promised was a partnership in which both Africa and the " rich" world had things to deliver. Both have succeeded only in part.

The deal was that the rich world would double aid, cancel 100 per cent of multilateral debt and redress a trading system which was wilfully skewed against the interests of the world's poorest people. Africa, for its part, would improve its governance, improve the transparency of its political and financial procedures and crack down on corruption.

On aid, some extra monies have been produced, but it will not be clear perhaps until the end of this year whether cash-strapped countries such as Germany and Italy are going to try to wriggle out of their promises. On debt, however, the IMF has already delivered and the World Bank is due to follow in July.

But on trade, the failure is already as clear as it is abject. There are to be new joint proposals from the UK and Brazil in an attempt to break the logjam by asking all the main parties to the talks to move out of their comfort zones. But only wild optimists are hopeful that the mercantilist tit-for-tat which has characterised previous rounds of trade talks - and which was so apparent in Hong Kong - will be ended. Only personal political intervention by Messers Bush, Chirac, Blair & Co will achieve that. Is there the will for that?

But poor Africans need more than better access to rich countries' markets. They need to produce more goods to trade, of the right quality and get them to market at the right price. To do that means better roads, vehicles, telecoms and power. A big section of Gleneagles' aid was earmarked for this. To implement that, the World Bank has come up with "an enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-related Technical Assistance". But at present it looks under-funded, and gives Africans insufficient say in how it is spent.

There is some progress. An Infrastructure Consortium for Africa was launched in October to help mobilise additional cash for the roads. African farmers need to get their perishable goods quickly to market. And money has been put up for an Investment Climate Facility to make the continent more attractive to business investors and broker funding by June for five African priority projects. It is too early to say whether this will work.

Likewise, the picture on health and education is patchy. An extra $3.7bn (£2.1bn) has been produced for the Global Fund to fight Aids, TB and malaria, but more is needed to fulfil the Gleneagles pledges. Yet most of the money has been provided to stop the transmission of polio in all countries by the end of 2007, though $575m is still outstanding. The World Bank has significantly increased its spending on water and sanitation in Africa. And planning has begun on how to provide HIV and Aids treatment to everyone who needs it by 2010.

But things look more wobbly on the pledge to provide primary education for all African children. The so-called Fast Track Initiative is $500m short, though that might be rectified at a funding conference this weekend on the pledge to remove school fees for African pupils and get more girls in to school.

Yet there is progress in a large number of other areas in which the Africa Commission demanded action. The UN Convention Against Corruption, which had languished unratified, is now in force. The UK's Export Credits Guarantee Department is due to report soon on a review of its anti-bribery and corruption procedures.

The majority of African countries with oil, gas and mining industries have now signed up to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative code, which demands that companies "publish what they pay" to African governments in order to promote transparency. Nigeria has already published what it receives.

Peace and security is another area where progress is evident. Britain has secured support from the EU and the Commonwealth for the launch of international treaties to control the flow of small arms which bedevil Africa. The UN has set up a Peacebuilding Commission to do more on conflict-prevention and to make post-conflict aid more effective. Plans to establish a Standby Force of 20,000 African soldiers to intervene in the continent's trouble-spots are on track; structures for the force's five brigades are being put in place, rules of engagement are being agreed and a network of peacekeeping training has been established.

Away from the gloomy headlines usually associated with Africa many nations are, quietly, working to keep their side of the bargain. Two countries, Ghana and Rwanda, have been extensively scrutinised by other nations under the African Peer Review Mechanism. Three other countries' reviews will be completed this year, along with recommendations on the reforms they need to make. The African Union is working to remove the barriers which hamper trade between African countries.

The battle against corruption is making some progress. Ministers have been forced to resign in Kenya. Local chiefs of police have been arrested in Nigeria. Pan-African co-operation has improved, with South Africa recently seizing more than £1m worth of assets from a corrupt Nigerian official. There are anti-corruption commissions now in Sierra Leone, Malawi, Uganda and Zambia.

There is, in all this, still much to do. Activists and voters in both rich nations and in Africa must remain vigilant to ensure that their politicians adhere to the promises they have made. But, one year on, far more has been achieved than many realists thought was ever possible.

The key issues

Aid

Rich nations have pledged to double aid to Africa - an extra $25bn (£14.4bn) a year - in five years. Not much of this has been seen yet. The UK is meeting its commitment to provide £1bn in aid to Africa a year. An extra $3.7bn has been produced for the Global Fund to fight the three major killers, Aids, TB and malaria. The UK, France, Italy, Spain and Sweden have given $4bn to a vaccine programme aimed at saving five million lives.

Debt relief

The Gleneagles deal on debt established the vital principle that poor countries need 100 per cent debt relief. Some 19 countries are benefiting already, 13 in Africa, and 38 more could follow. The IMF wrote off the debts in December. The World Bank is to do that too, as is the African Development Bank. Nigeria has had 60 per cent of its debts written off to put the $1bn a year it saves into education for 3.5 million more children.

Trade

A 1 per cent rise in Africa's trade would do it more good than a five-fold increase in aid and debt relief. So trade was the huge disappointment of the past 12 months. The trade talks in Hong Kong made token progress with a pledge to end the EU and US export subsidies, but they left untouched 95 per cent of other subsidies which harm African farmers. A massive change in attitude is needed to break the talks' stalemate.

Environment

The British G8 summit failed to persuade George Bush to sign the Kyoto agreement to retard climate change. But the US did agree (with the big Third World polluters, China and India) to serious talks on carbon-capture storage. The G8 also agreed to include climate-change risk factors in analysing of development projects, though these will not be in place in the UK till 2008. A secretariat has been set up to establish a global climate observation system.

Blair ally faces test of his commitment to democracy

Meles Zenawi, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, was one of the leading torchbearers of reform in Africa, transforming the oppressive apparatus of the previous Marxist regime into a relatively transparent government.

He fought off attempts by the ruling TPLF to drag the country back into war with Eritrea, and as leader of the biggest and most powerful country in the Horn of Africa, it has been easy for him to forge close alliances with the US in its war on terror. But after introducing multiparty democracy, this member of Tony Blair's Africa Commission blotted his copybook this year with human rights violations in response to protests against the government, funded and directed by the Ethiopian diaspora.

The crackdown on demonstrators in Addis Ababa was viewed as another blow to Africa's so-called "renaissance". Mr Zenawi has now been in power as long as the man he helped to overthrow, Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam. His real test will be showing that Ethiopia is committed to multiparty democracy and properly embraces good governance.