Deliver on commitments, ADB head urges G-8 leaders

The head of the African Development Bank (ADB) on Tuesday urged the leaders of the world's main industrialised nations to honour commitments they had made to Africa. ADB President Omar Kabbaj called on the world’s seven most powerful countries to honour pledges to increase foreign aid, tackle Africa’s massive foreign debt and open up their heavily subsidised markets. His plea, made at a meeting of African heads and finance ministers, came as a G8 summit in the French Alpine resort of Evian drew to a close. “We [...] appeal to our donor partners to seriously consider removing the many tariff and non-tariff barriers as well as various forms of subsidies that prevent the emergence of a level playing field for African exports,” he said at the 38th annual ADB meeting, which is being held at the UN Conference Centre in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. “We also appeal to them to consider granting special treatment for developing countries.” Mamadou Tandja, president of Niger, told the three-day summit that debt was a “millstone” around Africa’s neck. He urged the world’s wealthy nations to provide more debt relief or to wipe out the continent's debt completely. Sub-Saharan Africa spends US$40 million per day - about US$14 billion a year to service its foreign debt. This is more than the continent earmarks for education and health. Campaigners claim that debt relief plays a crucial role in development. They point, for example, to Uganda where, after debt repayments were reduced, school enrolment tripled in four years. Kabbaj also said there was hope for the continent and that Africans were gradually becoming masters of their own destiny. He told delegates that the ADB’s relocation to Tunis from Abidjan, in response to growing insecurity in Cote d'Ivoire in late 2002 and early 2003, was only temporary and that the bank would return to its West African headquarters.