Promises to Keep
With some nudging from activists, European politicians try to make good on pledges to Africa
"No Child Should Die if it's Avoidable"
Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer is trying to cajole other developed countries into coughing up more for Africa.
The Road to Recovery
Though outside aid and assistance are vital, Africa must find its own path from poverty to prosperity
The End Of Poverty
In a world of plenty, 1 billion people are so poor, their lives are in danger. How to change that for good
Posted Sunday, March 6, 2005; 14.09 GMT
Bono was meeting with Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, last April and didn't like the body language. "He avoided eye contact," the Irish rock star and activist recalls. "He stared at the floor, kept changing the subject." The subject was by how much Germany could raise its contribution to the developing world, which at 0.28% of gross national income (GNI) has lagged behind that of many other European countries. Bono understood why Schröder felt awkward. One of his officials had recently insisted that spending any more on Africa would "bankrupt Germany." "Fiscal discipline is a religious movement there," Bono joshes.
But a competing faith has taken root in Europe: Africa. The idea that extreme poverty is both abhorrent and fixable, and that Europe should focus its fixing on Africa, has gone mainstream. A network of campaigners refused to let the matter drop. In December, German rock star Herbert Grönemeyer mustered other celebrities to write a joint open letter to Schröder, suggesting Germany would be a pariah if it didn't do more on Africa. A few weeks later, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Schröder announced that Germany would back the initiative of Gordon Brown, Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, for a new funding mechanism to double aid to Africa. Privately, he promised to meet the E.U. and U.N. target of devoting 0.7% of GNI to development by 2015.
Schröder's pirouette was just the first act in what is becoming Europe's Year of Africa, as governments respond to pressure from antipoverty campaigners, their celebrity supporters, African leaders and the consciences of politicians like Schröder, Brown and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who came of political age when the 1985 Live Aid concert organized by Irish musician Bob Geldof alerted a TV audience of some 2 billion people to Africa's plight. Two weeks ago at a private reception at Lancaster House in London, Blair declared that "there is no more dramatic, more noble calling for a politician" than trying to help Africa.
This week an international Commission for Africa that Blair set up will disgorge a giant report laying out a blueprint for the continent. Time has learned it will call for a doubling of aid to Africa by 2010, as well as debt relief and sanctions against companies that pay bribes and banks that hold funds pilfered by corrupt leaders. Geldof, who sold Blair on the idea of the commission and serves on it, says the document "deals brutally with mutual failures — corruption and broken promises." It will argue that the time is ripe to make a big push on Africa, for four reasons. First, the complexities of development are now well enough understood that a major effort would get results, and be cheaper in the long run. Second, Africa itself seems ready. Seventeen of the 48 sub-Saharan countries have grown at an average of 4% or better for the last decade and some governments are becoming more transparent. Third, the cost of getting Africa on the right track is surprisingly small; according to the campaigning organization Debt Aids Trade Africa (DATA), just 8¢ — the cost of a stick of gum — per day per person in the developed countries could adequately fund all of Africa's development needs. Fourth, letting the continent continue to stagnate is morally outrageous and, in an age when failed states spawn terrorists, just plain stupid.
Nevertheless, since billions of dollars of aid have been plowed into Africa over the past few decades without reversing its decline, skepticism is understandable. Can the developed world really stay the course this time? Can Africa clean up its own act? Geldof says this year is "make or break." Finally, there's a chance politicians will put their money where their mouths are.
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