The Meeting of the G8 Countries and Africa:
Thieves Pleased with Themselves

Jul 18, 2005

The summit of the eight richest countries–the U.S., Germany, Italy, France, Great Britain, Canada, Japan and Russia–ended on July 8th with Tony Blair enthusiastically speaking "of the enormous advances" made for Africa.

In reality this summit was a duplication of those that preceded it: a long litany of generous declarations and forgotten promises.

Five years ago, 189 countries in the United Nations pledged to reduce poverty in half by 2015. Nonetheless, poverty continued to grow since that promise was made. Today poverty remains one of the most important scourges of the planet, with 400 million people living on less than a dollar a day in Africa alone!

The G8 summit has now promised to double the amount of aid furnished by the G8 countries and other donors to the poorest countries–an increase of 50 billion dollars over the next 10 years. Experts claim that at least 50 billion dollars more is needed every single year just to cut poverty in half.

Not only did the representatives of the great powers ignore this reality, they didn’t even bother to talk about how the money would be raised. They will discuss it later. Once again, there are only empty promises.

Summit meetings of representatives of the great powers are the pretext for a display of high-sounding sentiments, which are pure hypocrisy. While seeming to aid the poor countries, the rich countries continue to loot them and impoverish them. The small amounts of money going to the poor countries eventually will return to the rich countries themselves, in the form of orders for their manufacturing companies and for weapons to hold down the impoverished populations. In the meantime, the natural wealth of the poor countries will continue to be drained into the bank accounts of the big companies with their headquarters in the rich countries.