CAPE TOWN, South Africa - A leading official of the eight major industrialized nations group cautioned African leaders Friday to temper their expectations of attracting a massive influx of aid and investment as part of a development program for the world's poorest continent.
The program, known as the New Partnership for African Development, was accepted in principle by the G-8 at a summit in Genoa, Italy last year. A detailed action plan is to be presented at the G-8 summit in Canada in June.
The G-8 hoped the initiative would focus on changing the association between the developed world and Africa, said Robert Fowler, Canada's representative to the G-8.
While funding details for the initiative still have to be worked out, it has been suggested that it could cost dlrs 64 billion to address widespread poverty and underdevelopment. About 340 million people — half of Africa's population — live on less than one dollar a day.
"If people believe that NEPAD is suddenly going to produce dlrs 64 billion, they will be disappointed," said Fowler, who chairs the G-8 committee dealing with the program. "It is to me inconceivable that those kinds of resources ... could be made available in an early timeframe."
He was addressing reporters after talks between senior G-8 representatives and their African counterparts in Cape Town — the third of six planned meetings to flesh out the program ahead of the G-8 summit.
Other G-8 representatives at the meeting were Michel Camdessus of France, former managing director of the International Monetary Fund (news - web sites), U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter Kansteiner and British Undersecretary of State Baroness Valerie Amos.
The development program launched in July proposes that African countries commit to democracy, human rights, good governance and an end to civil war, in exchange for a package of trade and aid initiatives.
The program was not primarily about money, Fowler said.
"It's about putting in place the conditions that will allow investment to come to Africa, because private investment is going to bring to Africa far, far more than any foreseeable amount (of aid) could bring," he said. "In all of our countries we have to make changes to ensure that African exports will be welcome within our markets."
Amos said the program would only succeed in a climate of good political and economic governance, and this was not the situation in nations like Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe has been gripped by political violence for nearly two years, as the increasingly unpopular President Robert Mugabe tried to clamp down on dissent ahead of next month's presidential elections.
"I think that Zimbabwe is ... a kind of cloud hanging over (the development plan) but I think it would wrong to see Zimbabwe is a threat to this process," Amos said.
Wiseman Nkuhlu, Mbeki's economic adviser, said while Africa accepted that dictatorships and unaccountable governments were unacceptable, the situation in any one country could not be the litmus test of the continent's commitment to these ideals.
G-8 nations are the United States, Britain, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada, France and Russia.
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