Wealthy Nations Chided on African Aid

A star-studded panel led by former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan and funded by Microsoft founder Bill Gates is using celebrity and diplomatic prowess to pressure the world's major industrial powers to support development in Africa.

The Africa Progress Panel met in Berlin yesterday to chide the world's richest countries for neglecting a 2005 commitment to double aid to Africa within five years and to help lift the poorest continent out of poverty by 2015.

In its first official action, the panel met with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss the lagging financial commitments and to lobby them to put Africa atop the agenda of the Group of Eight, which includes the seven wealthiest nations plus Russia.

"When one promises, one has to deliver, and we are here to ensure that," Annan told reporters.

The meeting followed a World Bank report this month that global aid to poor countries fell to $103.9 billion last year from $106.8 billion in 2005. The decline jeopardizes the G-8's goal of doubling aid to Africa as well as the United Nation's "Millennium Development Goals," which include reducing global poverty by increasing aid to Africa.

The panel seeks to increase donations to the continent, arguing that without more aid, it will be impossible to expand programs to reduce child mortality, send more children to school and provide more villagers with clean drinking water.

At the rate that industrialized countries are donating, none of the U.N.'s Africa-focused goals will be met by the deadline, according to the World Bank's Global Monitoring Report.

The rate of progress is unacceptable, said the panel, which includes Citigroup director and former U.S. Treasury secretary Robert E. Rubin, Irish musician and activist Bob Geldof, Nobel Laureate and Bangladeshi microfinance expert Muhammad Yunus, and Peter Eigen, a founder of Berlin-based Transparency International.

There has been movement on other G-8 goals, however, including canceling the debts of 22 poor countries by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and African Development Fund. The debt relief has released money for education and health care.

Only five countries -- Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden -- have met the U.N. aid target of 0.7 percent of gross national income. The United States gave $22.7 billion in aid last year, or 0.17 percent of gross national income, far short of the U.N. goal. U.S. aid was down 20 percent from 2005, when it offered a large debt-relief package to poor countries, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

"I think the U.S. should be a leader," Rubin said. "We have a strong economy, but the aid budget is a minute percentage of the total federal budget, so increasing it would have no large effect."

Critics of the panel contend that increased aid does not lead to less poverty without accountability in how donations are spent. Most African countries do not have a strategy to combat corruption or the political will to reform, according to Transparency International. But Rubin said the Africa Progress Panel advocates the use of aid to train government employees to reduce inefficiency and corruption.