Bob Geldof too has a part to play in the G8's broken promises to Africa
Africa is back on the G8 agenda this week, at the exclusive resort of Heiligendamm, for the first time since Gleneagles in 2005. But no one is quite sure why, least of all the German public. Despite Bono's and Bob's best efforts, with a concert planned on Thursday and Bob guest-editing the biggest-selling German newspaper Bilt Zeitung last week, the Your Voice Against Poverty campaign has not caught the public imagination as Make Poverty History did in the UK in 2005.
German aid agencies are church-based and less orientated to campaigning, while Bono's rock recruits from the German music scene keep their distance from politicians for fear of damaging their credibility - but in the process lose their leverage over politicians eager for celebrity endorsement. Perhaps even the absence of colonial guilt (Namibia was Germany's only, brief, experience of African empire) has had some role to play.
Meanwhile, having Africa on the agenda has been a headache for the German government. Their concern is that the only story on the G8 and Africa will be about broken promises and how delivery of the 2005 pledges is disastrously off track. In the past few weeks, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has been looking for a good news story - an announcement of an increase in German aid of around €2bn (£1.35bn) is likely - to mask the fact that the G8's agreement in Gleneagles is in danger of falling apart. It has gone to the wire, with still no agreement on how to word the commitment to the 2005 deal. More "sherpa" meetings of officials will be held today and tomorrow ahead of the summit opening on Wednesday.
What was hailed as the most ambitious G8 commitment ever made is now looking dangerously close to a sham. It was agreed at Gleneagles to double aid to reach $50bn by 2010. But instead of aid rising, it actually fell in 2006 for the first time since 1997. The figures have been massaged to look better than they should by adding in massive debt relief for Iraq and Nigeria. Strip those out, and aid fell from five of the G7 countries (Russia is not included in the aid statistics) in the year after they had made historic commitments to increase it. At the current rate, there will be a shortfall of $30bn by 2010; more than half of what was promised in 2005 shows no sign of being delivered. G8 promises aren't worth the paper they are printed on.
So who are the villains? Well, it's a change from the usual story of US infamy because the core of this problem lies in Europe. It was European countries which made the biggest promises and which are proving so lamentably bad at implementing them. That's why what happens in Heiligendamm - the last G8 in Europe for several years - is so crucial. If Germany comes up with some money then it will pile the pressure on the worst offenders - France and, above all, Italy. Aid fell in the latter by 16% last year and unless something changes fast, it will deliver a paltry $1.4bn of the $9.5bn it promised by 2010. France's shortfall is running at 50% of its 2010 aid promise. Even the UK, which prides itself on its exemplary commitment to the developing world, is falling behind. If European countries got their act together, the Gleneagles agreement would be back on track.
It is hardly the most compelling rallying cry for campaigners - that victory counts not as new advances but as a reiteration of two-year-old promises. In fact, campaigners and aid agencies are in a bit of a dilemma. Pump up the outrage at the G8's duplicity and they risk disillusionment from all those who thought Make Poverty History's mass engagement was a triumphant success. What good does it do to point out that even after all the celebrities, the concerts, the media saturation and the white wristbands, progress is still achingly slow, edging forward and too often slipping back? It leaves a bitter taste that Make Poverty History might become by 2010 another example of the failure of mass public protest alongside the 2003 Stop the War march.
Harsh though it may be to say so, the dilemma is partly of Make Poverty History's making. It was a bold bid to inspire a generation's engagement with Africa but to do so, it sold itself as an instant solution. It made no attempt to manage expectations - on the contrary, it encouraged them to soar beyond any kind of realistic fulfilment. The desperate suffering and poverty of Africa could be solved. Campaigners always strike a precarious balance between optimism and realism, but the balance in 2005 was on the former. After Gleneagles, it declared victory and demobilised the troops.
What Make Poverty History didn't even attempt to explain to the generation it was trying to recruit was that campaigns on global justice have to be counted in decades not months, let alone weeks. It took 25 years for the debt campaign to achieve some measure of debt cancellation in 2005, and that battle is not over. Poor countries are still paying the rich world $100m a day in debt repayments. Countries signed up to 0.7% of gross domestic product in aid in 1970; the UK won't achieve it until 2013, 43 years later.
Nor did Make Poverty History explain how development is a complex business. If we struggle to achieve public sector reform in the UK, why should it be any easier to deliver effective schools and hospitals in Africa? It's not just about giving money. An uncomfortable gap in what aid can achieve has opened up between the campaigners and the policy experts on the ground. The latter complain that Africa is drowning in a plethora of global initiatives (100 on health alone), all of which gobble up the time and attention of under-resourced governments. The managerial plague of targets dictated by western donors is in danger of choking the kind of long-term investment African public services need. Donors want results to sell to their electorates and supporters - numbers of children vaccinated, bums on school benches - but often what's first needed is stronger infrastructure such as good administrators, teachers trained or midwives paid properly.
Donor disillusionment is a real danger because it will sap the determination to tackle what will be the biggest campaigning challenge of the next half century - climate justice. In Africa, it's estimated that 232,000 square miles of cultivatable land will be ruined, and up to a third of Africa's population could face water shortages by 2020. Africa is the continent that will be hit first and hardest by climate change. The World Bank puts adaptation costs for developing countries at $41bn a year, yet so far only $48m has been contributed. The issue is making its first appearance at a G8 summit this week. But if it is taking nearly half a century to reach the 0.7% aid commitment, there's no guessing how long it will take - how many marches, rock concerts and celebrities not yet born - not just to get pledges on climate justice from the mouths of G8 leaders but to get them delivered.
