Africa's time has come - and may have gone
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,1573155,00.html
Larry Elliott, economics editor
Monday September 19, 2005
The Guardian
Looking back, it is clear when the tide turned on Britain's year for
Africa. The four bombs in the London rush hour on the morning of July 7
marked the high water mark of the west's cooperation on development and
things have never been quite the same since.
The terrorists timed their attacks to coincide with the G8 Gleneagles
summit and at a moment when Tony Blair was euphoric after the previous
day's announcement that London had won the 2012 Olympics. The
government had put in months of hard work to chivvy the other G8
nations into an agreement to make debt relief more generous,
substantially increase aid flows and push forward reform of the global
trading system to make it easier for developing countries to export.
The idea was relatively simple. At Gleneagles, the G8 would come up
with proposals that would govern policy towards Africa for the next
decade; these would then be submitted to the special session of the
United Nations, which took place last week. It was assumed,
optimistically as it turned out, that the deal could be extended beyond
the G8 and, more importantly, that a plan of action would be agreed to
put into practice what had been agreed at Gleneagles.
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