The Commission for Africa, also known as the Blair Commission for Africa, was an initiative established by the British government to examine and provide impetus for development in Africa. Initiated in Spring 2004, its objectives include the generation of new ideas for development and to deliver implementation of existing international commitments towards Africa. [1] African leaders form a majority of the 17 commissioners.
The report of the Commission was released in March 2005. [2] The publication was welcomed by international agencies, who also urged caution. "The proof of the Africa Commission’s worth will be in the political will and energy it manages to drum up to turn its recommendations into reality," said a spokesperson for Oxfam. [3]
The Commission and its report had a clear impact upon the public debate in the UK, and to some extent elsewhere, on how development in Africa might be accelerated. At the G8 summit of world leaders in Gleneagles, Scotland that year, the report was seen as a blueprint for action by the G8. The Gleneagles summit pledged what the Commission report had asked for in terms of a doubling of aid and significant extensions of multilateral debt relief. But it failed to deliver what the Commission had demanded on trade – including an end to agricultural export subsidies by rich nations and end to 'reciprocity' in world trade negotiations.
The summit did, however, promise to implement 50 of the Commission's 90 recommendations including: $36bn of debt relief in 100% debt cancellation delivered for 19 countries; the launch of the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF); doubling previous levels of aid for basic education, to remove school fees, and to scale up efforts to boost girls’ participation and female literacy; two million additional Africans given antiretroviral treatment for HIV/AIDS; immunisation programmes which have stopped the transmission of polio everywhere except Nigeria; training 20,000 more African peacekeepers; tightening controls on the trade in small arms; working more closely with the African Union and its New Partnership for Africa (Nepad) programme to make African governments more accountable to their people; pressing rich nations to ratify the UN Convention on Corruption; putting in place measures to return cash looted by dictators from Western banks to the legitimate owners; and using export credits to clamp down on Western companies who pay bribes.
After the summit however the profile of the report faded but it clearly had a major impact on the delivery of policy, though it is not clear whether all the Commission recommendations which were pledged at Gleneagles will be fully implemented.
In April 2007, the Africa Progress Panel (APP) was launched as an independent authority on Africa to focus world leaders' attention on delivering their commitments to the continent. The Panel, chaired by Kofi Annan, is composed of Michel Camdessus, Peter Eigen, Bob Geldof, Graça Machel, Strive Masiyiwa, Linah Mohohlo, Robert Rubin, and Tidjane Thiam.
On 13 September 2010, the Commission launched a second report, Still Our Common Interest, looking at what had happened since the last report – both in Africa and against the individual recommendations made in 2005. It found that, despite considerable progress towards the Millennium Development Goals in many African countries, Africa's economic success over the preceding five years had yet to be translated into economic benefits for the majority of Africans. The report noted that there had been progress against many of the recommendations, but very little movement in the area of trade reform, in particular. It made new recommendations on how to ensure that the promise of Africa's accelerated economic growth was converted into development across the sub-Saharan African region. It called on African countries to continue reforms that would make it easier to invest and do business and on African governments to fulfill their commitments to spending on health, education, water, sanitation and infrastructure. It called for continued and expanding aid from developed countries, but reiterated the importance of making progress on increasing Africa's share of global trade. It is stated that one per cent of global trade is worth $195 billion to Africa in 2009 – five times the amount it received in aid.
The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) is an economic development program of the African Union. NEPAD was adopted at the 37th session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government in July 2001 in Lusaka, Zambia. NEPAD aims to provide an overarching vision and policy framework for accelerating economic co-operation and integration among African countries.
Robert Frederick Zenon Geldof is an Irish singer-songwriter, actor and political activist. He rose to prominence in the late 1970s as lead singer of the Irish rock band the Boomtown Rats, who achieved popularity as part of the punk rock movement. The band had UK number one hits with his compositions "Rat Trap" and "I Don't Like Mondays". Geldof starred as "Pink" in Pink Floyd's 1982 film Pink Floyd – The Wall. As a fundraiser, Geldof organised the charity supergroup Band Aid and the concerts Live Aid and Live 8, and co-wrote "Do They Know It's Christmas?", one of the best-selling singles of all time.
The United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) was a body under the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) tasked with overseeing the outcomes of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development/Earth Summit. It was replaced in 2013 by the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, which meets both under the General Assembly every four years and the ECOSOC in other years.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were eight international development goals for the year 2015 that had been established following the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in 2000, following the adoption of the United Nations Millennium Declaration. These were based on the OECD DAC International Development Goals agreed by Development Ministers in the "Shaping the 21st Century Strategy". The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) succeeded the MDGs in 2016.
Make Poverty History are organizations in a number of countries, which focus on issues relating to 8th Millennium Development Goal such as aid, trade and justice. They generally form a coalition of aid and development agencies which work together to raise awareness of global poverty and achieve policy change by governments. The movement exists or has existed in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Romania, South Africa, Ireland, the United Arab Emirates, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom. The various national campaigns are part of the international Global Call to Action Against Poverty campaign.
Live 8 was a string of benefit concerts that took place on 2 July 2005, in the G8 states and in South Africa. They were timed to precede the G8 conference and summit held at the Gleneagles Hotel in Auchterarder, Scotland from 6–8 July 2005. Both events also coincided with the 20th anniversary of Live Aid. Run in support of the aims of the UK's Make Poverty History campaign and the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, ten simultaneous concerts were held on 2 July and one on 6 July. On 7 July, the G8 leaders pledged to double 2004 levels of aid to poor nations from US$25 billion to US$50 billion by 2010. Half of the money was to go to Africa. More than 1,000 musicians performed at the concerts, which were broadcast on 182 television networks and 2,000 radio networks.
The 31st G8 summit was held on 6–8 July 2005 at the Gleneagles Hotel in Auchterarder, Scotland and hosted by Prime Minister Tony Blair. The locations of previous G8 summits to have been hosted by the UK include: London ; and Birmingham (1998). It is the first G8 summit to be held in Scotland. A sixth UK summit was held in Lough Erne in 2013; and a seventh UK summit was held in Carbis Bay in 2021.
Paul Vallely CMG is a British writer on religion, ethics, Africa and development issues. In his seminal 1990 book Bad Samaritans: First World Ethics and Third World Debt, he first coined the phrase that campaigners needed to move "from charity to justice" – a slogan that was taken up by Jubilee 2000 and Live 8.
Oxfam Australia is an Australian, independent, not-for-profit, secular, community-based aid and development organization, and is an affiliate of the Oxfam International confederation. Oxfam Australia's work is divided into four broad categories covering climate justice, Economic Justice, Gender Justice and First Peoples Justice as well as Humanitarian response. They believe that poverty in the 21st century is less a problem of scarcity but the result of how resources, opportunities, and protections are distributed and wielded.
Abbey Aid was an open-air pop concert held at the Abbey Stadium, Cambridge, England in May 2006. It was the first of its kind in Cambridge, targeting pop fans as opposed to the more established Cambridge Folk Festival which targets a substantially different audience. It was a huge flop.
Tidjane Thiam is a French and Ivorian businessman, and the executive chairman of Freedom Acquisition Corp. He was the chief executive officer (CEO) of Swiss bank Credit Suisse from March 2015 to February 2020. He was the chief financial officer of British banking group Prudential from 2007 to 2009, and then its CEO until 2015. In 2019, Thiam became a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
The 34th G8 summit was held in the town of Tōyako, Hokkaido, Japan, on July 7–9, 2008. The locations of previous summits hosted by Japan include Tokyo and Nago, Okinawa (2000). The G8 Summit has evolved beyond being a gathering of world political leaders to become an occasion for a wide variety of non-governmental organizations, activists and civic groups to congregate and discuss a multitude of issues.
The IBSA Dialogue Forum is an international tripartite grouping for promoting international cooperation among these countries. It represents three important poles for galvanizing South–South cooperation and greater understanding between three important continents of the developing world namely, Africa, Asia, and South America. The forum provides the three countries with a platform to engage in discussions for cooperation in the field of agriculture, trade, culture, and defence among others.
Kingsley Y. Amoako is a Ghanaian international civil servant with a five-decade career in African development. He is a thought leader on policies and initiatives of governance and growth on the continent, and he has worked alongside development specialists to address African and global development issues.
The Africa Progress Panel was a Swiss-based foundation that aimed to bring about policy change through unique combination of cutting-edge analysis, advocacy and diplomacy. The panel's members had access to the worlds of politics, finance, business and civil society at the highest levels, globally and in Africa.
The Financial Stability Board (FSB) is an international body that monitors and makes recommendations about the global financial system. It was established after the G20 London summit in April 2009 as a successor to the Financial Stability Forum (FSF). The Board includes all G20 major economies, FSF members, and the European Commission. Hosted and funded by the Bank for International Settlements, the board is based in Basel, Switzerland, and is established as a not-for-profit association under Swiss law.
Linah Kelebogile Mohohlo was a Botswana banker and university chancellor. She was the first female Governor of the Bank of Botswana from 1999 to 2016. She was also the first female Chancellor of the University of Botswana, serving from 2017 to 2021.
Ebrahim Patel is a South African cabinet minister, who holds the position of Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition. He previously served as Minister of Economic Development from 2009 to 2019.
Caroline Kende-Robb is a Senior Adviser at the African Center for Economic Transformation, a Pan-African think tank influencing policy across Africa and globally to support Africa’s long-term growth through transformation.
Chad–Spain relations are the bilateral and diplomatic relations between these two countries. Chad is accredited to Spain from its embassy in Paris, France. Spain is accredited to Chad from its embassy in Yaoundé, Cameroon.