Africans have their voices heard at the G8 Summit

  
"We want food because medicine for HIV works better with good nutrition."

This August, a message was delivered from Africa to the leaders of the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. The message was that Africans have something to say about development decisions. The message was that G8 nations have a responsibility to listen. Many voices called out in unison for the G8 to create policies that empower, rather than encumber, African governments' ability to respond to tragedies such as HIV/AIDS.

Since African voices are consistently underrepresented at the G8 summits, ActionAid International collected messages from around the African continent in the form of stories and photographs. They provided all convention delegates with a thick book full of powerful photographs, picturing thousands of Africans holding signboards with their own handwritten messages to Western leaders. Some signs shared stories of suffering; others contained pronouncements such as "We need unconditional aid, no strings," "Give AIDS orphans a chance," and "G8 Men: Do you have the balls?"

Rita Aloto-Coker (center) and Ivy with messages

Rita Aloto-Coker, the Communications Director of ActionAid Ghana, was part of the team of activists who traveled across Africa to gather these pictures and messages as part of the Get on Board campaign. "It was the most unbelievable journey of my life," she said. The group boarded a small bus in South Africa in March 2005 to travel through the East African countries of Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda before shipping their vehicle to Italy so that it could travel to Gleneagles, Scotland, for the G8 Summit in August.

They traveled through many of the countries in Africa that have been hardest hit by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, stopping to talk with men and women about their daily struggles with a singular goal in mind: to bring their voices and faces to the G8 Summit. The team was able to speak with community members, people working to alleviate the suffering of people living with AIDS, government representatives, and world leaders.

In most countries, the team was welcomed with rallies, parades, or events that assembled community members to articulate and carry a message to the West. In Kenya, when the Actionaid team organized a rally in the capital, the president expressed a public commitment to scale up the fight against HIV/AIDS in his country. He pledged to "fight the disease until we stop it," and called for everyone in Kenya to join the campaign.

African slum children with messages for the G8 Summit

For Mrs. Aloto-Coker, portions of the journey were inspirational and others were tearful. After visiting an AIDS widow named Grace and her four HIV-positive children, she admitted, "As an African, I have never encountered such a situation of hopelessness." The family was living in a shack in the Bwaise slum of Kampala, Uganda; one of Grace's children was dying of cerebral malaria.

Mrs. Aloto-Coker stated, "There are thousands of such children all over Africa crying silent tears, looking for help where there is none. Will someone out there help them so that the number of HIV/AIDS orphans is reduced? The G8 must make the right decisions that will free Africa from poverty and helplessness."

G8 leaders who view photographs of Grace are unlikely to act with the speed necessary to help her and her children. Her fate and the fate of millions like her depends on the ability of her own community to care for her needs. But Grace's community and country are impoverished. They cannot provide adequate care.

Get on Board tour kids

ActionAid's mission for the journey was to bring stories like Grace's to world leaders and people of Western nations, in order to clarify the connection between human misery and the debt repayment policies that affect African nations. It is poverty that hinders the ability of African governments to operate social programs that combat complex problems such as HIV/AIDS. African governments' inability to react to social ills breeds a sense of hopelessness in communities all across Africa. Mary Sang, a female farmer who the campaign encountered in Kenya, told them, "Our government doesn't care about us." Her sentiments are echoed by millions of African people.

At the summit, G8 leaders pledged that a portion of all future aid packages to Africa will be earmarked for HIV/AIDS programs. However, the aid package of $50 billion that was presented is to be divided among a variety of social programs in more than 30 nations around the continent. The total amount of debt reduction for each nation represents just a drop in the bucket of their larger outstanding debts, which continue to accrue interest by the day. While drawing up fairer economic trade agreements could begin to resolve the spiraling debt of African nations by empowering them to establish healthy economies, the G8 leaders chose not to remove some of the most damaging conditions of these trade agreements, such as subsidies for Western farmers.

AIDS Campaign team members and ActionAid staff at Stand Tall Against Poverty concert in Independence Square, Ghana

In addition, the newest G8 package emerged with the customary conditional terms for nations receiving aid. As Mrs. Aloto-Coker concluded, "What Africans want is to see their government's ability to stand up against donor conditionalities. Aid to our governments has to be given in such a way that will make them respond to their people's needs." It is estimated that $200 billion in new contracts have been guaranteed to Western companies and non-governmental organizations, enabling these foreign entities to manage the development of African economies. If these contracts had been distributed to local African companies and organizations, there would be considerably more optimism on the continent.

To find out how you can get involved with ActionAid in your community and to read more about the Get on Board tour, visit www.actionaid.org.


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