G8 Statement on Development and Africa

The G8 Summit in Japan is almost over and here are some of the agreements and statements made by the G8 on their recent meeting in Japan. The G8 is composed of the following nations: France, United States, United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada.

Here is their statement on Development and Africa...

Development

40. At the mid-point to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), although progress has been made, significant challenges remain. We renew our commitment to these goals by reinvigorating our efforts, and by strengthening our partnerships with, as well as encouraging the efforts of, the developing countries based on mutual accountability. The OECD/DAC estimated the global increase of official development assistance (ODA) by 2010 at around US$ 50 billion a year. We are firmly committed to working to fulfill our commitments on ODA made at Gleneagles, and reaffirmed at Heiligendamm, including increasing, compared to 2004, with other donors, ODA to Africa by US$ 25 billion a year by 2010. We commend the successful replenishments of the resources of the International Development Association, the African Development Fund and the Asian Development Fund in which G8 countries provided nearly 75% of donor's contributions and we acknowledge that ODA from G8 and other donors to Africa should be reassessed and may need to be increased for the period after 2010, beyond our current commitments. We expect that the UN High-level Meeting on MDGs in September will provide a timely and important opportunity to demonstrate commitment, to review progress, and to identify remaining challenges and necessary coordinated international and country-led actions to overcome them. We look forward to the UN Secretary-General's MDG Africa Steering Group's recommendations. We also reiterate that our focus on development cooperation should be on the promotion of good governance and self-sustained, private sector-led economic growth in developing countries.

41. In tackling the development agenda, we will take a multi-faceted approach, promoting synergies among MDG-related development sectors particularly among health, water and education, in a framework of sustainable development. In this regard, our work will be grounded in the set of core principles of development policy that we endorsed at Heiligendamm, including promoting good governance based on transparency and rule of law and broad-based private sector-led growth. We will promote a 'participatory approach', involving all key players and stakeholders. We will work together, and with other countries, in a complementary manner, to address global health priorities and deliver on existing health commitments. We will also work to improve human security through protection and empowerment of individuals and communities. In addition, we emphasize the importance of education, science and technology as a means to facilitate development. We will promote gender equality and women's empowerment as a principle in our development cooperation through mainstreaming and specific actions. We will reaffirm during the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness our commitment to make our aid more effective based on the Paris Declaration principles. We continue to encourage innovative approaches to leverage private investments in connection with domestic public financing and official development assistance.

42. We renew our commitment to support the development agenda agreed in the Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development which underscored the importance of mobilizing all available sources for development including ODA, foreign direct investment and other private flows, trade, debt relief, innovative financing, and domestic resources. We will contribute to the success of the Follow-up Conference on Financing for Development in Doha thereby giving fresh impetus to the Monterrey Agenda and the global partnership launched there.

43. Peace and security are fundamental to states' ability to meet the needs of their people. Fragile and post-conflict states remain farthest from reaching the MDGs. Overcoming fragility and successful recovery requires comprehensive, integrated and sustained international assistance, including peacekeeping and peacebuilding efforts where necessary, tailored to the particular context. Coherent and complementary responses of all relevant countries including the G8, and international organizations can break the cycle of misery and despair and help set countries on the track to MDG attainment.

44. We acknowledge the importance of facilitating remittance flows given their development impacts. The G8 conference on remittances in Berlin in November 2007 reviewed the actions agreed at the Sea Island Summit in 2004. In this context, we will follow-up the seven recommendations adopted at the Berlin conference on improving data, development impact, remittance services, access to finance, innovative channels and on the creation of a Global Remittances Working Group. We appreciate the work done by international financial institutions in this regard and invite the World Bank to facilitate the work of the group and provide for coordination.

Health

45. As a result of its growing political and financial commitment to fight infectious diseases, the G8 has raised international awareness on global health issues and contributed to remarkable improvements on health in partner countries, notably access to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care; stabilization of tuberculosis incidence; increased coverage of innovative tools such as insecticide-treated nets against malaria; impressive falls in measles deaths; and considerable progress on polio which is closer to eradication than ever before. Investment through the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria together with national efforts, bilateral and other multilateral programs has enabled recipient countries to save more than 2.5 million lives to date. The Second Voluntary Replenishment Conference held in Berlin in 2007 raised US$ 9.7 billion for expanded activities during the period 2008-2010. But many challenges remain toward reaching the health-related MDGs. G8 members are determined to honor in full their specific commitments to fight infectious diseases, namely malaria, tuberculosis, polio and working towards the goal of universal access to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care by 2010. In this regard, we welcome the report submitted by our health experts along with its attached matrices, showing G8 implementation of past commitments to ensure accountability. Building on the Saint Petersburg commitments to fight infectious diseases, the experts' report sets forth the 'Toyako Framework for Action', which includes the principles for action, and actions to be taken on health, drawing on the expertise of international institutions. We also agreed to establish a follow-up mechanism to monitor our progress on meeting our commitments.

46. In view of sustainability we aim at ensuring that disease-specific and health systems approaches are mutually reinforcing and contribute to achieving all of the health MDGs, and will focus on the following:

(a) We emphasize the importance of comprehensive approaches to address the strengthening of health systems including social health protection, the improvement of maternal, newborn and child health, the scaling-up of programs to counter infectious diseases and access to essential medicines, vaccines and appropriate health-related products. We reiterate our support to our African partners' commitment to ensure that by 2015 all children have access to basic health care (free wherever countries choose to provide this). We underline the need for partner countries to work toward sustainable and equitable financing of health systems. We also welcome the efforts of the Providing for Health Initiative as well as the International Health Partnership and the Catalytic Initiative. We reiterate our commitment to continue efforts, to work towards the goals of providing at least a projected US$ 60billion over 5 years, to fight infectious diseases and strengthen health. Some countries will provide additional resources for health systems including water.

(b) Reliable health systems require a reliable health workforce. To achieve quantitative and qualitative improvement of the health workforce, we must work to help train a sufficient number of health workers, including community health workers and to assure an enabling environment for their effective retention in developing countries. In this regard, we encourage the World Health Organization (WHO) work on a voluntary code of practice regarding ethical recruitment of health workers. The G8 members will work towards increasing health workforce coverage towards the WHO threshold of 2.3 health workers per 1000 people, initially in partnership with the African countries where we are currently engaged and that are experiencing a critical shortage of health workers. We will also support efforts by partner countries and relevant stakeholders, such as Global Health Workforce Alliance, in developing robust health workforce plans and establishing specific, country-led milestones as well as for enhanced monitoring and evaluation, especially for formulating effective health policies. In this context, we take note of the Kampala Declaration and Agenda for Global Action adopted in March 2008 at the First Global Forum on Human Resources for Health.

(c ) We note that in some developing countries, achieving the MDGs on child mortality and maternal health is seriously off-track, and therefore, in country-led plans, the continuum of prevention and care, including nutrition should include a greater focus on maternal, new born and child health. Reproductive health should be made widely accessible. The G8 will take concrete steps to work toward improving the link between HIV/AIDS activities and sexual and reproductive health and voluntary family planning programs, to improve access to health care, including preventing mother-to-child transmission, and to achieve the MDGs by adopting a multisectoral approach and by fostering community involvement and participation.

(d) As part of fulfilling our past commitments on malaria, we will continue to expand access to long-lasting insecticide treated nets, with a view to providing 100 million nets through bilateral and multilateral assistance, in partnership with other stakeholders by the end of 2010.

(e) To maintain momentum towards the historical achievement of eradicating polio, we will meet our previous commitments to maintain or increase financial contributions to support the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, and encourage other public and private donors to do the same.

(f) To build on our commitments made on neglected tropical diseases at St Petersburg, we will work to support the control or elimination of diseases listed by the WHO through such measures as research, diagnostics and treatment, prevention, awareness-raising and enhancing access to safe water and sanitation. In this regard, by expanding health system coverage, alleviating poverty and social exclusion as well as promoting adequate integrated public health approaches, including through the mass administration of drugs, we will be able to reach at least 75% of the people affected by certain major neglected tropical diseases in the most affected countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, bearing in mind the WHO Plan. With sustained action for 3-5 years, this would enable a very significant reduction of the current burden with the elimination of some of these diseases.

(g) We support ongoing work to review travel restrictions for HIV positive people with a view to facilitating travel and we are committed to follow this issue.

Water and Sanitation

47. Good water cycle management is crucial in order to address the issue of water, which has a cross-sectoral nature. In this regard, acknowledging the need to accelerate the achievement of the internationally agreed goals on water and sanitation, we will reinvigorate our efforts to implement the Evian Water Action Plan and will review it on the basis of a progress report prepared by our water experts by the next Summit. We will discuss with African partners the development of an enhanced implementation strategy. Moreover, we will promote integrated water resource management and the concept of 'Good Water Governance', with particular focus on Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia-Pacific, by taking necessary actions such as strengthening of trans-boundary basin organizations, sharing of water-related expertise and technology with developing countries, support for capacity building for water-related initiatives, promotion of data collection and utilization, and adaptation to climate change. We also acknowledge that ensuring adequate water supplies for human, industrial and environmental uses while minimizing the impacts of extreme hydrological variability are critical to protecting human health, promoting sustainable economic growth, and ensuring peace and security.

(a) We call upon national governments, in this International Year of Sanitation, to prioritize access to sanitation, building on the initiatives agreed at conferences on sanitation in Asia-Pacific and Africa. In this regard, we support the leadership role of the African Ministers' Council on Water and the action of the African Development Bank.

(b) We will support efforts to improve the governance of the water and sanitation sector with a view to ensure that monitoring and reporting, at the international and national levels, are improved and that institutions responsible for delivering water and sanitation services are more capable, accountable and responsive to the needs of users.

Education

48. Strengthening the capacity of individuals, organizations, institutions and societies is the key to sustainable development and growth, therefore education in developing countries should be reinforced at all levels. Accordingly, we attach importance to life-long learning and a holistic approach to the education system, namely, continuing to prioritize universal completion of quality primary education by boys and girls, while responding to the need for striking a good balance between primary and post-primary education in relation with national constraints and economic needs. We are committed to addressing the issues of shortage, retention and management of teachers in Africa as well as improving learning outcomes. We will work further to improve access to and the quality of education through capacity development of teachers as well as community involvement. Teacher training should be intensified emphasizing the development of needed competencies and skills. Since school health and school feeding could improve both school enrolment and children's wellbeing, we will promote synergies with other development sectors.

49. We remain committed to Education for All(EFA) and the international agencies which implement it and support the efforts of the Fast Track Initiative(FTI) for universal primary education. We, along with other donors, will continue efforts to mobilize bilateral and multilateral resources to meet the shortfalls of FTI- endorsed countries estimated by the FTI Secretariat at around US$1billion for 2008, while supporting the improvement of its effectiveness through an external evaluation. There should be a strong emphasis placed on the quality of education and program effectiveness. We will pay specific attention to countries affected by conflicts or crisis, to girls and to marginalized populations who remain mostly excluded from school. G8 progress to support FTI, including meeting shortfalls, will be monitored through a report to be delivered at the 2009 Summit.

Towards a Vibrant Africa

50. Africa in recent years has made an impressive rise with an average annual growth rate of more than 5%, attracting increased foreign investment and trade flows. We encourage African countries to improve their investment climate and to continue their efforts for economic and governance reform to stimulate the increased flows of private capital, domestic and foreign, necessary to sustain their growth and vibrancy, to make their progress on development irreversible. We are committed to working with Africans to create conditions that can lead to an increase of private investment through various measures including strategies to build institutional capacity in financial markets, public private partnerships to develop infrastructure, financial and technical assistance and risk-sharing guarantees for entrepreneurs, and support of investment funds. In this regard, we endorse the G8 Action Plan for Private Sector Led Growth adopted by the G8 Finance Ministers. This will also help countries take advantage of the opportunities and address challenges of growing capital inflows.

51. Reaffirming that principles of ownership and partnership are essential for African development, we agree that the following points, inter alia, are critical both to generating private sector-led economic growth and achieving the MDGs:

(a) working with other donors and international organizations to support appropriate, country-led strategies aimed at increased rates of sustainable growth,

(b) improvement of business environment, and strengthening the financial sector including increase of domestic savings and SMEs access to financial services,

(c) improvement of domestic revenue generation capacity by African countries and of transparency in the use of resources,

(d) development of infrastructure, in particular road and power networks, focusing on trans-national solutions and coordination through the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa together with private financing,

(e) increasing access to electricity in order to overcome energy poverty,

(f) support for agriculture and sustainable land-use and natural resource management mainly through the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme(CAADP), and productivity enhancement through development of agriculture infrastructure (irrigation etc), new crop varieties such as NERICA rice, livestock systems, post-harvest processing and research, human resources, and improvements to link small farmers to markets while encouraging African governments to increase investment in agriculture in line with the Maputo Declaration,

(g) facilitation of free and open trade through the multilateral trade system with due consideration of the African situation, effective implementation of the financial commitments regarding spending on Aid for Trade including trade related technical assistance, made at the WTO Hong Kong Ministerial Conference, which we expect to increase to US$4billion including the support for marketing of African products. We are fully committed to provide duty-free and quota-free market access for products originating from Least Developed Countries (LDCs) as agreed at the Hong Kong Conference,

(h) support to continental and regional integration and cooperation will be a key element to build larger integrated market, attract more investment, and address challenges with a trans-national dimension,

(i) encourage companies to consider how, in pursuing their business objectives, they can contribute to poverty reduction, and

(j) support for good governance, including promotion of anti-corruption measures, through the African Peer Review Mechanism.

52. We welcome the important contributions of the Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD IV) which adopted the Yokohama Declaration. In the spirit of partnership which characterizes our relations, we will reflect views of African partners in our future cooperation.

53. We endorse the progress report on our cooperative efforts for African development submitted by our Africa Personal Representatives (APRs). We encourage them to strengthen the G8-Africa partnership and to discuss the possible evolution of the Africa Partnership Forum together with other participants. We have asked our APRs to enhance reporting on actions and progress on commitments by G8 members.

Peace and Security in Africa

54. Peace and security in Africa is fundamental to its sustainable development. Therefore we will promote peace and security through supporting the African Union and Regional Economic Communities in enhancing Africa's peacekeeping capabilities in particular the African Peace Security Architecture (APSA), including the African Standby Force (ASF) including training and equipment; through working with the African Union on assuring sustainable and flexible funding for African-led peace support operations; as well as through enabling seamless peacebuilding support, including to humanitarian, reconciliation, stabilization, recovery and reconstruction efforts and increased capacity of deployable civilian expertise. In this context, we look forward to the recommendations of the UN-AU High Level Panel that will consider solutions for enhanced support to the AU.

Expanding Partnership for Development

55. Better coordination among various partners, particularly with the private sector, along with emerging donors and NGOs, is of vital importance for more effective aid in the context of new sources of assistance. The G8 will therefore strengthen ties with those partners by deepening aid dialogues. In dialogues with emerging donors, in particular as members of the G8 through the Heiligendamm Process, we will properly address such issues as good governance, aid effectiveness in line with the Paris Declaration, aid transparency and debt sustainability. Debt cancellation initiatives by the G8 have extensively relieved many African countries of their unsustainable debt burdens. Developing countries long-term external debt sustainability should be supported by encouraging lenders and borrowers to pursue sustainable lending practices. Cooperation between developing countries and joint efforts bringing together developing countries, emerging economies and developed countries into a partnership should also be promoted.

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