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| Africa must honour graft pledge-AfDB President | |
19 Apr 2006
Reuters Foundataion-Africa cannot point fingers at rich nations for providing inadequate aid if it fails to fight corruption at home, one of the continent's top lenders said.Donald Kaberuka, President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), told Reuters Africans had to improve governance if they wanted the G8 group of rich nations to keep promises made at a 2005 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, to increase aid. "I am not prepared to sit here and point fingers at the guy who comes from Gleneagles bringing money, if I am not prepared to say to Africa 'improve the investment climate, reduce risk'." "Africans are fed up with corruption," he added in an interview late on Tuesday. Fighting poverty "cannot be done for Africans. It should be done by Africans". Kaberuka said he would take his message of "mutual accountability" between donors and recipients to fellow international bankers at the upcoming annual Spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The AfDB - whose shareholders include Africa's 53 nations and 24 donor countries from around the world - often works closely with the IMF and World Bank in lending to the continent. The Bank lends commercially to Africa's richest nations and allocates loans at concessionary rates to poor ones from its African Development Fund, financed largely by Western donors. At Gleneagles the G8 pledged to more than double aid to Africa by 2010 and promised to work to end the farm export subsidies that undercut Africa's own agricultural products. Africa's leaders have sought to persuade Western nations the continent is on the path to democracy and ending war, despotism and corruption -- all conditions for more assistance. But the problems remain profound. More than 40 percent of Africans live on less than $1 a day, more than 200 million Africans are threatened by serious food shortages and AIDS kills more than 2 million Africans a year. Kaberuka said if commitments made at Gleneagles were honoured Africa stood a change of attaining the seven per cent average annual real economic growth it needed meet anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). But Africa had to play its part. "Africans also made a commitment and the most important is better governance. It is time to deliver," he said, calling for robust checks and balances to improve accountability. The MDGs set timetables to halve extreme poverty, provide elementary education and halt the spread of AIDS, all by 2015. Kaberuka, who took up his job in September 2005, was Rwanda's Finance Minister for more than 7 years. He is credited for his role in steering the Rwandan economy to stability and growth after the country's 1994 genocide that killed an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus. Kaberuka does not share the scepticism about aid long fashionable among African observers. "Portugal, Spain and Ireland are evidence that aid can work in particular circumstances. So the issue is not whether it can work or not, the question is can we create conditions in Africa for aid to work," he said. Much of that task boiled down to better governance. "I am aware of conflict raging in parts of Africa, of the ...infrastructure gap, the impact of HIV/AIDS, corruption, and I come back to the investment climate, and that means checks and balances, better infrastructure and better governance." Reuters Foundation |
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