My Beauty Best Teacher

Chukwu-Emeka Chikezie writes:

So, here we are again. Two years on from the July 2005 gathering at Gleneagles, Scotland, the acceptable face of African leadership is preparing to assemble on the steps of the Group of Eight (G8) summit at Heiligendamm, Germany for a photo-opportunity amid more heartfelt pleas to increase aid to Africa...Africans themselves - from the grassroots to the more enlightened governments - have similarly argued that their principal route out of poverty lies in the creation of more jobs, something the aid industry is largely silent about. Gordon Brown has been conducting his own, lower-level but evidently affecting, love-affair with Africa. We can only hope that, as Tony Blair strides off-stage to leave him the limelight, he will lay aside the temptations of celebrity to apply some of the medicine that has been good enough for Britain in the last decade.

Paul Collier author of 'The Bottom Billion'writes in OpenDemocracy:

Since the 1960s countries with around a billion people have been diverging from the rest of the world at an accelerating rate, a trend which will generate unmanageable social pressures. Most of these countries are in Africa, and so it is appropriate that the region should again have been on the Group of Eight (G8) agenda at the summit in Heiligendamm, Germany on 6-8 June 2007. Unfortunately, the debate on what the G8 should do has been entirely dominated by aid. More aid for parts of Africa would probably be helpful, but it would not be decisive in reversing divergence. It is, in fact, a sideshow relative to the other policy instruments that G8 governments control. It is the failure to use these instruments that is the tragic missed opportunity. Because aid has dominated the airwaves people are simply unaware of our true potential for action. Africa faces three distinctive economic problems, each amenable to a distinct policy.

The WSJ reports:

The richest nations recognized that the poorest continent can best help itself by unleashing investment and opening up to the private sector. The final aid numbers from Heiligendamm aren't as headline-grabbing as from the G-8 Gleneagles summit in 2005, but the strategy is far better suited to helping Africa out of poverty...The new aid is conditional on improved governance, i.e. less corruption, more respect for human rights, freer trade and openness to capital. The G-8's vision is spelled out in a communiqué on "Growth and Responsibility in Africa(pdf)," focused on spurring investment and business.
Take, for example, the Making Finance Work for Africa program, initiated by the World Bank and endorsed by the G-8. Under this initiative, G-8 countries will help national governments and regional organizations such as the African Union and the New Partnership for African Development to fund small loans, provide training for central bankers, reduce transaction costs for workers abroad who send remittances to families at home, and guarantee home-mortgage loans. None of this is big-ticket development assistance, but that's the point. Financial services help people help themselves to start businesses, buy homes and develop their economies.