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Last Updated: Oct 28th, 2008 - 17:57:18 |
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - African leaders on Monday told rich countries to honor their aid commitments to help it tackle hunger and poverty, even as a financial crisis threatens to cut into the aid budgets of its biggest donors.
Speaking during a U.N. meeting on Africa's development needs, Africa Union Chairman and Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete said he was concerned the financial turmoil in global markets would escalate, but rich countries had made aid promises to Africa that they should keep.
"We want the developed nations to perform their moral obligation of assisting the poor," Kikwete told a news conference. "We want the developed countries to deliver on the rest of their commitments that they have not honored."
He said money was especially important at a time when many African economies are growing strongly and need to build transport routes and increase power supply to get products to international markets.
"Where there is a will, there is always a way," Kikwete said. "There may not be easy answers but I believe the U.S. will overcome the crisis."
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged concerted global action, warning that Africa was falling behind in goals to drastically reduce poverty by 2015 under the Millennium Development Goals, set by world leaders in 2000.
He said soaring food and fuel prices and the effects of climate change were new challenges facing Africa and its efforts to tackle poverty, hunger and disease.
Ban, who has chosen the poverty goals as the keynote theme of the annual General Assembly gathering of leaders of the 192 U.N. member states, said it would take $72 billion a year to help Africa.
"This price tag may look daunting but it is affordable and falls within existing aid commitments," he said, noting that the world's industrialized countries spent an estimated $267 billion last year on agricultural subsidies alone.
A $700-billion rescue plan by the U.S. government for troubled Wall Street firms amounts to 10 times the aid Ban called for in his speech. The financial crisis pushed global oil prices up by over 20 percent -- its biggest one-day gain on record -- to more than $120 a barrel on Monday.
UNDEVELOPED WEALTH
Kikwete said while Africa may be rich in oil resources, much of that wealth had not yet been developed.
"We will plan our own development, but we have inadequate resources to be able to implement those plans ... and we want our efforts complimented by the developed countries," he said.
African Development Bank President Donald Kaberuka said a slowdown in growth in developed countries would impact Africa, especially if demand for its commodities declined sharply.
"This crisis is serious, but frankly, I hope it doesn't lead to reduced efforts to help developing countries because that would be a disappointment," said Kaberuka.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Africa was at a turning point but its governments needed to guard against running up more debts that would require further debt cancellation by rich countries.
"In future let us guard against too rapid and too costly public re-indebtedness," Sarkozy said. "Let us not set the stage today for a new debt crisis in 2030."
He questioned why some lenders restricted funding to investment in projects when Africa needed budget support.
Large emerging lenders like China are ramping up financing for power and transport projects in Africa, most of it in countries endowed with natural resources, while turning a blind eye to human rights abuses and corruption.
"Europeans and Africans have agreed on untying aid. Why then go back on this principle with donors from other continents," Sarkozy said, without naming China.
Kikwete said China, India and Brazil were investing in needed infrastructure projects but their capacities to help Africa were limited.
Jeffrey Sachs, a development campaigner and professor at New York's Columbia University, said the $72 billion a year needed for Africa "is not an outlandish price tag".
"The U.S. Congress is about to vote $1 trillion for Wall Street this week. That is no joke, and shows money is there when it's an emergency," he told a panel on African development at the U.N.
"Some people might have thought 10 million dying every year is an emergency, some people might have thought a food crisis is an emergency, but no it is not an emergency. Africa needs a failing bank, clearly, then we might get a response."
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