A steady first step forward
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One Saturday last July, more than half the world’s population watched a bunch of ageing rock stars run through their back catalogues. At the behest of Bob Geldof, Pink Floyd agreed to a reunion; Paul McCartney sang Hey Jude. As darkness fell, the Who summed it up for those mixing pop and politics: Won’t Get Fooled Again. Live 8 came halfway through a year when Africa was given unprecedented attention on the world stage. As Duncan Green, head of policy at Oxfam, put it: “Listen to the number of times you hear politicians using the words ‘make poverty history’. In terms of brand recognition, it’s enormous - bigger than Jubilee 2000.” But what did it all achieve? At the start of 2005, a year in which the UK held the presidencies of the G8 and EU, the government urged the public to hold it to account. Throughout the year, the Guardian has been doing just that, starting a year ago when the G7 finance ministers met in London. With the G7 and Russia meeting this weekend in Moscow, it is time to assess what happened. There is still a spotlight on Africa. At a packed meeting at the World Economic Forum last month, Nigeria’s president, Olusegun Obasanjo, said such a gathering at the annual meeting of the CEOs from the world’s richest companies would have been unimaginable. He was right. At the same meeting, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, pledged to raise Berlin’s aid budget to the UN target of 0.7% of GDP. Live 8 was followed four days later by the Gleneagles summit at which Tony Blair badgered the rest of the G8 industrial countries to sign up to a reciprocal deal: more aid, trade and debt relief in return for a commitment by Africa’s leaders to improve the way they governed. Despite being forced to dash back to London by the bombs on 7/7, Blair returned to Scotland a day later to finalise a deal which saw the G8 agree to 100% debt relief for poor states from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the African Development Bank; a rise in aid to $50bn a year by 2010; anti-Aids drugs for nearly all who need them; and a pledge to protect 85% of vulnerable Africans against malaria. |