AfricaVox 2007

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.

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.

“We need the G8’s help in the fight against poverty and HIV”

Zinhle Mapumulo

I think South Africa is in denial. This applies to me too.

South African AIDS activist

When I heard there was a village in the North West Province where almost every household is affected by HIV and AIDS I thought “yeah, sure, it can’t be that bad”.

But it was – and is. I’ll be writing more about that in my next blog.

There’s been a fair amount of coverage about the South African government downplaying the HIV epidemic. But it’s not just HIV, it’s poverty in the country in general.

Urban dwellers like me don’t think that media reporting of ‘poverty-stricken’ Africa applies to Johannesburg, Durban or Cape Town – the cosmopolitan cities we call home.

So when I was asked to canvass opinion on my fellow South Africans’ expectations of the G8 Summit, I was surprised to find that this denial isn’t universal...