More Good News/Bad News

[andrewducker]

    * Trade discussions in Hong Kong later this year should yield an end date to agricultural subsidies.
    * Britain is to host a 1 November meeting on climate change, to assess progress.
    * $3bn agreed for Palestinian Authority for investment in infrastructure.
    * Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo described the deal as a "success".
    * G8 commits to training 20,000 peacekeepers for Africa.
    * African leaders to commit to democracy and good governance as part of the deal.
    * Debts of the 18 poorest countries to be forgiven.
    * Universal access to anti-HIV drugs in Africa by 2010.
    * US now accepted global warming was an issue.

But on the other hand, there's still a lot of debt out there and an awful lot of work to do, and the date for ending agricultural subsidies will doubtless be in about 10 years and phased out over a further 20.

Still, at least the problems are being acknowledged and movement is being made in the right directions.

Comments

[code-delphi.livejournal.com]

Cynicism aside, it *does* give some grounds for hope that things might move in the right direction. Of course, there's no choice as far as climate change goes (already too late to mitigate what will happen, but at least it won't be exacerbated).

Helping Palestine is brilliant, and the least they (especially the US) can do.

Giving Africa a hand is... surprising. No obvious reason to help (from a national self-interest point of view), though the millions with AIDS is getting a little hard for leaders to ignore. Perhaps the US and EU sees Africa is an expanding market, that'd be ideal to capture... can't buy McDonalds if they're all dead.

Or perhaps it really is genuine, heart-felt altruism! Maybe one day it will be.

[andrewducker]

Giving Africa a hand is... surprising. No obvious reason to help

Well, millions of people pledging support, massive amounts of publicity and the fact that Blar and Brown clearly saw it as "their thing" is probably the reason...

[code-delphi.livejournal.com]

Please forgive my ignorance! Yes, that much focus would have the resulting effect, of course.

Africa's plight doesn't get much media coverage in Australia, and for whatever reason has never really featured highly in our national consciousness. Not being in the G8, or part of Europe, or a former colonial power, probably also contributes.

Strangely enough, we may vaguely believe that since Africa is populated with former colonies like ours, they're kind of on an equal footing... that is, our roots are the same, and thus they can look after themselves like we did/do. Doesn't make much sense, but deep cultural tendencies or blindspots often don't (and by definition don't get questioned, no matter how ridiculous). Our education (at least primary and secondary) certainly ignores modern and near-modern Africa.

[andrewducker]

Strangely enough, we may vaguely believe that since Africa is populated with former colonies like ours, they're kind of on an equal footing... that is, our roots are the same, and thus they can look after themselves like we did/do.

Wow, that's very strange. I was tempted to go into why they were so different, but the job's too big for an LJ entry. Let's just say that Africa was treated significantly differently from Australia.

[code-delphi.livejournal.com]

I absolutely agree, and so would any Australian if they actually thought about it. Fact is, as a nation we're basically ignorant of world history; even our own national history pretty much glorified the antics of our colonial/explorer ancestors over the last two hundred years, ignoring the existing aboriginal civilisation (which had a richness and diversity that is only now being revealed). Their slaughter was also generally glossed over; what happened to them as a race is absolutely appalling.

Anyway, given that, Africa got zero coverage in our schooling, and gets very little in our media.

I really didn't mean to give the impression that helping Africa out of its hole isn't a good thing, though it seems that making the aid effective is extremely complex and different for each country... I certainly hope that it's more along the lines of conveying the skills, expertise and initial infrastructure to allow the African nations to become self-sufficient, as opposed to just shipping them food. Help them to help themselves. It appears they're not going to get the debt relief they were hoping for, I gather.