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Kevin Watkins writes in The Guardian that Africa needs G8 leaders to follow Gordon Brown and fulfil their aid pledges. But the signs aren’t good.
It’s easy, what with the duck ponds, ministerial hissy fits, and media hysteria in the Westminster village, to see how events in Africa can slip under the political radar – events like a few million people dropping below the poverty line, surging child malnutrition, and parents struggling to keep their kids in school.
The G20 deal was an extraordinary achievement. But for all the positives, it’s important to recognise what the G20 has not delivered. If one of the benchmarks for measuring success is delivery for sub-Saharan Africa and the world’s poorest countries, the outcome is mixed at best – and disappointing at worst. The result is somewhere around 5/6 out of 10.
In good times or bad, there is one commodity which Africa always enjoys in abundance: namely, advice on fiscal responsibility. The real scarcity today is the flow of finance needed to prevent the economic downturn from turning into a human development reversal.
Tags: Add new tag, aid, financial crisis, imf, kevin watkins, mdgs
As governments prepare for the G20 meeting in April, there is one thing you can be sure of: the agenda will be dominated by the global financial crisis. If you’ll forgive the expression, it’s an absolute banker.
So here’s the question. As the financial meltdown continues its journey from the US housing market, through the banking systems and real economies of rich countries and into the lives of the world’s poorest people, when are we going to see a financial rescue package for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)?
Tags: aid, financial crisis, mdgs
