DAKAR, Senegal (AP) - More than 600 million of the world's poorest people live in Africa - often in crowded cities, or in small villages lacking health clinics or schools. Unlike every other region in the world, the poverty here worsens each year.So when some of the world's most powerful leaders stood before the television cameras and promised drastic change, including an annual aid increase of $50 billion by 2010 with half going to Africa, many Africans cheered. But a year on, the huzzahs are fading. "They earned great kudos, internationally and at home: It looked like they were really doing something," Oxfam Great Britain's Muthoni Muriu says of the pledges made at last year's Group of Eight summit, which host British Prime Minister Tony Blair had seen as the culmination of a year focused on Africa.
"We really must celebrate what little steps have been made," says Muriu, the British charity's Kenyan-born West Africa program director. "But we must see the big picture, which isn't that good."
Disease, conflict, illiteracy: Africa's ills are well known. But the solutions aren't. Africans face a web of interlocking woe: How can you train workers if pupils aren't fed well enough to concentrate in school? How can businesses succeed if skilled employees fall sick with malaria? How do you stop the spread of malaria if the mosquitos that carry it thrive in open sewers?
Implicit in the G8 promises were expectations African leaders would do more to embrace democracy and clean up corruption. There, again, progress has been fitful.
| It goes on. And on. And on. Much like Africa. |