Africa 'needs more' from G8 leaders

The continent has a plan to pull itself out of poverty, but one of the men who drew it up says the West must help

The amount of help being offered to Africa by the Group of Eight most powerful industrial nations is "inadequate", according to the man at the heart of the continent's effort to regenerate itself, but the recent G8 summit in Canada was just the beginning.

Professor Wiseman Nkuhlu, a senior adviser to President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, says the level of trust between Africa and the industrialised world has improved considerably, and Western leaders now take Africa more seriously than ever before. He was briefing a meeting of the international advisory board of Independent News & Media, owners of The Independent and The Independent on Sunday, at Castlemartin, the Irish home of the newspaper group's chairman, Sir Anthony O'Reilly.

Professor Nkuhlu, a veteran of Robben Island prison and South Africa's first black chartered accountant, is one of the architects of Nepad (the New Partnership for Africa's Development), a long-term initiative designed to improve the economic plight of the world's poorest continent. The plan, largely the brainchild of President Mbeki, was discussed by the G8 leaders at their recent two-day summit in the Canadian Rockies.

At the end of the meeting the leaders agreed that Africa "could'' (not "will") receive $6bn (£4.12bn) a year, which will not go far in a continent where 300 million people live on $1 a day or less. The African leaders had identified an "investment gap'' of some $64bn to meet the targets set by Nepad; the proffered amount fell woefully short of that rather optimistic figure.

But Professor Nkuhlu, who was returning from Canada, insisted he was not disappointed.A good start had been made, he said, and it was important to build on that for the next summit in France in 2003.

As he spoke, the world's newspapers were recording their verdict on the summit: it was a "moral outrage'', an "insult to Africa'' and worse. The same day, some $35bn had been wiped off share values in London alone. WorldCom had announced it had fraudulently exaggerated its profits by nearly $4bn, yet the G8 leaders had offered debt relief of less than $2bn to the world's poorest countries.

A number of members of The Independent's advisory board had more than a passing interest in the outcome of the G8 summit: Brian Mulroney, as Prime Minister of Canada, hosted the same group of industrialised nations (then, before Russia joined, known as the G7) in Toronto in 1988, and was the first prime minister to write off African debt.

Peter Mandelson, in continual touch with his friend Tony Blair (who along with Jean Chrétien, the present Prime Minister of Canada, had been Nepad's only real supporter at the meeting), wanted the insider's perspective. Baroness Margaret Jay chairs the Overseas Development Institute, one of the many non-government organisations which had lobbied hard in the build-up to the summit.

Nepad, said Professor Nkuhlu, was not just another African initiative designed to wring aid from the conscience of the West. It was based on the understanding that Africa had to sort out its own problems first and foremost, and put its political house in order with "good governance'', the end of conflicts, violence and corruption. African nations must respect human rights, the rule of law and the democratic process, and despite what was happening in Zimbabwe genuine progress, recognised by Mr Blair in particular, was being made.

But Africa could not make it on its own – the terms of international trade had tilted disastrously and unfairly against it. Cheap produce from heavily subsidised American farmers and enormous surpluses from the unreformed Common Agricultural Policy were putting African farmers out of business. As international markets were closed to Africa and cheap imports flooded the shops, jobs had vanished.

Everywhere south of the Sahara, already miserably poor Africans have been getting steadily poorer for the past 20 years. Conflict and bad governance have not helped. But, as Mr Blair told his fellow leaders in Canada, the real issue is unfair global trade rules. "It really is hypocrisy for us, the wealthy nations, to talk of our concern to alleviate poverty of the developing world while we block access to our markets.''

At Castlemartin Mr Mandelson quoted Mr Blair's private assessment of the G8 meeting: the Nepad discussions marked "a departure – not an arrival''.