Africa is cautious about G8 results: 'not much has changed'

The critics fastest off the mark after the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, were - as usual -from Europe. Only hours after the meeting of the industrialised nations ended Saturday, they agreed that the summit results were too vague regarding Africa. By contrast, participants from Africa - which featured high on the G8 agenda - were slow to react. And the South African public remained apparently completely unfazed.
Although South Africa was one of the emerging countries that had sent its president to the meeting, its national media either ignored the issue completely or reported it only on the back pages of the newspapers.
The real analysis of the G8 results will be due only when the World Economic Forum meets for an Africa summit in Cape Town next week. The meeting will be attended by heads of state and government, as well as ministers and managers from across Africa.
The chief negotiator of German Chancellor and G8 host Angela Merkel, Bernd Pfaffenbach, and former United Nations General-Secretary Kofi Annan are also expected. Despite the impending high profile wrap-up of the G8 summit, however, the expectations of the summit results from Germany had been rather cautious even before Heiligendamm.
As a result, the post-Heiligendamm mood is rather sobering: "While African leaders welcomed the commitment, they said it was not enough," the newspaper The Weekender wrote Saturday. One of the few harsher critics was South African development expert Ben Turok. The professor and ANC member was outspoken in his rejection of the summit results.
"There's some bookkeeping going on," he fumed, referring to the fact that the debt cancellation for Africa's poorest countries was accounted against development aid. South African broadcaster SABC's correspondent put it in a nutshell: "Another year, a different venue - and it seems, not much has changed," she said, reporting from Heiligendamm. Many African politicians had hoped for a kind of Marshall Plan for Africa, referring to the US redevelopment program for Germany and Europe after World War II.
However, it became clear even ahead of the summit that the G8 countries did not share this vision. African politician are also increasingly looking to Asia and Latin America as the growing South-South co-operation among the emerging countries India, China and South Africa appears to succeed Europe and North America as a growth engine for Africa. Possibly unexpectedly for Heiligendamm participants, the first headlines have appeared in Africa asking: "Is South-South the new North?"