AfricaVox 2007

Will we ever see a Merkel Plan for Africa?

Richard M Kavuma

As the G8 Summit cruises into its final 24 hours, the media centre at Kühlungsborn has been bustling with activists from international pressure groups. One of today's most moving speeches came from Kumi Naidoo, chairman of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty.

Naidoo told his listeners that should the Summit fail to help Africans, it would not be the failure of ordinary Germans, Japanese or Americans but the failure of their leaders.

This Summit is particularly important for Chancellor Angela Merkel, he said, because it was in Germany in 1884 that the partition of Africa was hammered out. Africa is still suffering the consequences.

Perhaps Merkel now offers Germany a chance to correct that historical wrong.

Merkel might also remember that had Germany not received help in the form of the Marshall Plan after the Second World War, it wouldn't be among the world's richest countries now.

So, can Merkel come up with a "Merkel Plan" to save Africa? Moreover, said South African Naidoo, would the G8 be dragging its feet if the skin colour of those suffering was "not so dark"?

Who's really listening to African women’s voices?

One of the AfricaVox journalists, Zinhle Mapumulo, has been interviewed for openSummit, a blog covering the G8 process from a woman’s perspective.

Zinhle talks about her motivation for covering this year's Summit and her experiences so far:

"As a woman, I feel there’s never any in-depth coverage of women: I want to know how do the G8 contributions, how do their pledges benefit me and my 2 year-old daughter..."

“Women’s empowerment is the key to development in Africa. That’s what I’d like them to focus on. How will their pledges empower us?”

> Read the full interview

AIDS prevention paying the price of the G8 donor circus

Kaikare Kirunda

G8 negotiators have spent much of the week in disagreement over a range of issues – including the commitment made two years ago at Gleneagles to increasing aid to Africa. As the Summit opened today, the prospects for Africa weren’t looking bright.

Perhaps that’s unsurprising. It’s well known that aid has actually gone down in real terms, once debt relief is taken out of the equation. In fact aid agency Oxfam says, going by the present trends, the G8 could miss its 2010 target by $30 billion.

As the rows continue at the Summit, Germany too has been accused of only being interested in pushing its own model of social health insurance while apparently ignoring Africa’s own health strategy.

That all this is happening when some of the G8 countries – especially the US and Germany – made important aid increment announcements prior to the Summit is mind-boggling.

But what's happening here reflects the confusion these countries exhibit in their aid programmes for Africa and the rest of the developing world. More importantly these conflicts have damaging consequences on the ground.

South Africa’s climate wake-up call

Thabo Mabaso

Climate change is proving to be one of the most disputed issues at this year's G8 Summit - and one that the South African president is keen to discuss in his role as G8 outreach delegate. Thabo Mabaso looks at South Africa's own climate prospects.

Charles Abani, the regional director of Oxfam Southern Africa, says a two per cent increase in temperature over the next five years will damage efforts to achieve meaningful economic development in the country.

“If South Africa does not wake up, it is sitting on a powder keg,” he said today.

“The country needs to show leadership by beginning to reduce its own greenhouse gas emissions and by leading the call for the West to pay compensatory finance for the damage they have done to the climate.”

Climate change is one of the topics that will preoccupy the G8 leaders this week. At issue are concerns that increased greenhouse gas emissions have damaged the global climate.

The G8’s $17 million security fence scandal

Kakaire Kirunda

When I arrived in Germany on Sunday I learned from a report in the local press that the security fence around the venue of this year’s three-day G8 Summit cost close to $17 million.

Dissent Network

I promptly sent a text message to tell Michael, my colleague back home. He was not amused: “Couldn’t those people take their summit to another venue where they wouldn’t need to construct a new barricade? Did they have to waste that money?”

I asked why he was concerned – after all, it wasn’t his government spending that money. His response was humbling:

“I lost my uncle to AIDS because he couldn’t get started on the life-saving drugs due to the bureaucracy... They should have donated that money to one of the countries most affected by this pandemic.”
 
While organisers of the G8 found it right to spend millions of dollars on a fence, in Africa the same amount would have helped prolong the lives of over 100,000 AIDS patients by providing them with a year’s supply of anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs).

According to the World Health Organisation sub-Saharan Africa has the greatest number of people on treatment and the second-highest rate of treatment coverage among those who need it. But the region still accounts for 70 per cent of the world’s unmet need for treatment.

Africa: master of its own destiny

Thabo Mbeki

The South African president, Thabo Mbeki, is on his way to Heiligendamm to take part in Friday’s outreach talks at the G8 Summit.

But Thabo Mabaso says it’s worth remembering that the G8 isn’t the only global forum where decisions about Africa are made.

This week at the Alternative G8 Summit in Rostock I talked with Hassen Lorgat, a well-known NGO lobbyist in South Africa.

He mentioned an important, yet little acknowledged fact: while African nations and groups recognise the importance of bodies like the G8, there is growing discomfort that this club of rich nations does not speak for everyone, especially the African continent.

Most importantly, he added: “We recognise that nothing can happen for us without us”.

Africa faces what to some may seem to be insurmountable problems. HIV and AIDS, poverty, the effects of climate change, underdevelopment. The list is long. There have been countless attempts to try and sort these problems out. But these have failed dismally for various reasons.

Demonstrators stop clowning around

Demonstrators dressed as clowns were messing about with police yesterday evening outside the international media centre - presumably knowing that lots of press would guarantee lots of photos. But today the festival atmosphere has faded as the protestors try to blockade the roads to Heiligendamm...

Uganda's debts cancelled but health workers "don't see the change"

Esther Aikoru has been a health professional in Uganda for 15 years, but has barely a dollar in the bank.

Although healthcare systems are high on this year's G8 agenda, health experts such as Médecins Sans Frontières have slammed donors for failing to fund increases in health workers' salaries.

Esther told Collins Vumiria that she would like to see things change now that Uganda's debts have been written off.

A serious party with the anarchists at Camp Rostock

Collins Vumiria

It was with genuine curiosity that I visited one of the camps of activists, anarchists and all-purpose demonstrators in a field just outside Rostock today. The gathering of 9,000-odd protestors has a festival atmosphere, and as I arrived many were spilling out of their tents and heading into the city.

dropping knowledge

Yesterday they demonstrated against the European Union’s restrictive policies on immigration. Given their pro-freedom stance, I figured it would be fine for me to wander around the camp and speak to some people about their motivation for demonstrating.

As someone working for a radio station in rural Uganda, I’m here to report on the decisions that might affect my listeners’ – mainly subsistence farmers – lives. So I wanted to find out why these people have travelled far from their homes to sleep out in the cold for a week.

I hadn’t got far before I was stopped by a demonstrator who told me she didn’t trust any journalist, no matter which country they come from.

The new curse of counterfeit drugs

Kakaire Kirunda

Having been a victim of malaria only a few days before my travel to Germany, there was no way a particular article in the June edition of Emirates airline's in-flight magazine was going to escape my attention.

The article was titled Deadly Fakes. It was about an emerging ‘epidemic of counterfeits’ of life-saving drugs in Asia, which is now spreading to the developing world.

The article spoke of bogus antibiotics, tuberculosis drugs, AIDS drugs and meningitis vaccines. I wondered whether I might be one of the latest victims of this phenomenon given that the first course of treatment I got for my malaria failed to work.

All this spells doom for Africa where most of the aforementioned drugs are needed more than ever before. With more ARVs, TB drugs and anti-malarials on the increase in Africa – where most national drug authorities lack the technology to identify fakes – the statistics of fatalities caused by counterfeit drugs are bound to skyrocket.