It is a scandal that the G8 are trying to quietly drop the promise they made to the world when millions campaigned to make poverty history.

The UK government should do all it can to stop this betrayal of the world’s poor at the Canadian G8.” ~Max Lawson, policy adviser for Oxfam, guardian.co.uk

The G8 will gather in Canada this month for the Muskoka summit where Aid to Africa has not been mentioned in a leaked draft communique for the meeting.

At 2005 Gleneagles summit the world’s most industrialized nations committed to provide increase aid to developing countries by around $50 billion a year by 2010. An extra $25 billion in financial assistance was allotted to Africa a year.

The commitment of aid applies to 7 of the 8 G8 countries: Britain, the US, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Japan – but not to Russia.

This year the aid commitments are to fall far short of what was promised and the subject has been quietly dropped from the agenda.

Britain’s new prime minister David Cameron is being tested by this issue. In the past Britain has been at the forefront of Western aid to Africa.

How surprised can we be that aid to Africa was dropped? Africa is the continent richest in natural resources yet desperately in need of aid and these industrialized countries had a part in getting Africa to that state that it’s in today.

This European Union thing doesn’t seem to be working though. Greece experienced a major collapse in their financial system and the EU, especially Germany didn’t respond with the type of unity that…well that a union should have. So look how they’ve responded to the need for aid in their own group.

They’re trying to save themselves while they are doing considerably better than many African nations and they’re looking to keep it that way, thank you very much.

I’m reminded of “We Are The World”, the charity single whose sales were supposed help provide aid for Africa.

Buy the “We Are The World” MP3 at Amazon.com

All these years later and Africa still needs aid. The money doesn’t always go where it should. Sometimes bad guys get rich. Sometimes aid and food isn’t distributed. Sometimes G8 economic policies rob the continent. Sometimes those from the continent rob the continent.

Sometimes an American kid goes to Africa and feeds kids and becomes more enlightened, but Africa is always there as a place to go when you want to help. Always in need, a recipient of well meaning dollars to prop up the non profit industrial complex.

These problems don’t seem to get solved and it’s not made clear often enough how things got to be this way. I’m actually glad to be alive at a time when South American countries are saying no to International Monetary Fund “loans” and green solutions are used to help people help themselves in sustainable systems as opposed to waiting on aid. A time when Haitian farmers burn genetically modified seed “donations” and people start to get the understanding that these “loans” and “donations” should have quotes around them.

It’s encouraging to know that independent of the agenda of the world’s richest, most industrialized nations people are still making decisions for themselves so they won’t be as vulnerable when the best laid plans of mice and men go awry.

Src: guardian.co.uk

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