Africa offers reform in exchange for aid

Five African leaders will this week present the world's richest countries with a bold new plan to bring Africa back into the global economic mainstream, offering good government in return for increased aid and investment, and easier access for African goods to Western markets.

Five African leaders will this week present the world's richest countries with a bold new plan to bring Africa back into the global economic mainstream, offering good government in return for increased aid and investment, and easier access for African goods to Western markets.

Along with terrorism and the fragile world economic recovery, the so-called Nepad initiative – the New Partnership for African Development – will top the agenda of this year's G8 summit, which opens in Kananaskis, Canada, tomorrow). The plan, which aims to attract an extra $64bn (£42.5bn) of resources a year to the world's most impoverished continent, will be unveiled by Presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Olesegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria and Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal. Its authors say it offers the best, and perhaps also the last, real chance of breaking the vicious circle of bad government, war, disease and poverty in which Africa is trapped.

Under the scheme, the rich world will increase debt relief, aid and long-term investment. In return, participating African countries will commit to standards of good governance and human rights which they will police. In this way, they hope to lay to rest the negative image of Africa, perhaps the greatest single deterrent to private investment in the continent.

But just as at the UN development summit at Monterrey last March, the promises will be easy, delivering on them less so. Kananaskis will be a new test of the sincerity of the rich developed world's promises to do more to help Africa, and of Africa's ability to put its own house in order. On both scores, substantial doubts exist.

Having agreed in Monterrey to increase American foreign aid by 50 per cent by 2004, President George Bush undid much of the good work shortly afterwards by announcing a 10-year, $190bn subsidy package for US farmers. It will generate extra surpluses of agricultural goods, which will be dumped on African markets, making it even harder for African producers to sell both on their own markets and in a key potential export market such as the US.

And Africa must lay to rest the spectre of Zimbabwe, as it plunges deeper into economic misery and political crisis. Despite expressions of concern, neighbouring countries have failed to pressure President Robert Mugabe to moderate his brutal, self-defeating policies, which have brought Zimbabwe to the brink of ruin.

In an effort to get back to the G8's origins as a chance for world leaders to talk informally, the summit will be at the idyllic Rocky Mountain retreat of Kananaskis, with the press kept 50 miles away in Calgary.

But magnificent mountain vistas will be no guarantee of a smooth ride for the G8, which comprises the US, France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia. Hopes of a vigorous US-led recovery from a shallow recession are fading, and concerns over the runaway US current account deficit and the rash of corporate scandals are reflected in the plunging dollar.

The G8 leaders will try to show all is well. But there may be strong differences over the dollar between the US and its partners. The leaders will also take stock of Mr Bush's "war against terror" and the fear of new attacks by al-Qa'ida.