Halfway to 2010, only 14% of the G8’s promise to Africa has been delivered.

In 2005, the G8 made a series of commitments to Africa that included a doubling of development assistance to the continent by 2010 and a collection of specific pledges like achieving universal access to AIDS treatment, supporting universal primary education and making trade work for Africa. Today in Paris, ONE launched the DATA Report 2008 (http://one.org/report/en/index.html), which monitors G8 progress towards these goals. This year’s report shows that the G8 are falling further behind on their 2005 commitment to contribute an additional $22 billion in assistance to Africa by 2010. The G8 are halfway to the 2010 deadline, but so far have only delivered $3 billion, or 14%, of the $22 billion commitment. If the G8 continue at their current pace, they will not keep their promises to Africa.

There is also good news. As you have read in this blog many times before, the assistance that has been delivered is making a real, measurable difference on the ground, saving lives and brightening futures for millions of Africans. Because of recent increases in development assistance:

· 2.1 million Africans are on life-saving AIDS medication, up from only 50,000 in 2002.

· 26 million children were immunized and against a group of life-threatening diseases between 2001 and 2006,

· 29 million African children were able to enter school for the first time as a direct result of debt relief and increased assistance between 1999 and 2005,

· 59 million bed nets had been distributed by the Global Fund alone, helping to dramatically reduce malaria rates in countries such as Tanzania, Rwanda and Ethiopia.

These statistics are proof that aid works and that G8 failure is unacceptable. There are no more excuses for the G8 not to deliver what it promised in 2005. The DATA Report lays out a clear roadmap for how the G8 can get on track to meet their 2010 goals by scaling-up measures that have been proven to work.

Read more about the DATA Report’s specific findings on development assistance.

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Here is a summary of the DATA Report’s findings on development assistance:

· The G8 had committed to just over $25 billion alone and other non-G8 countries committed to another $4.3 billion.

· The G8 did not do well in 2007. In 2007, total ODA for Africa only increased by $837 million. Canada, Japan and France actually cut ODA to Africa in 2007.

· In the three years since Gleneagles, the G8 has not done great either. Contributions have been slow to be delivered. We’re halfway to the 2010 deadline, but so far only 14% of the money has come through ($3 billion).

· For three years the G8 have delivered less than the total that would have been needed to be on a straight line trajectory to the 2010 target. This means that getting to the goal in 2010 will require much larger annual increases between now and 2010. In total, ONE estimates that the G8 will need to increase ODA to Africa by $6.4 billion each year starting in 2008. Right now, ONE’s analysis shows that the G8 will only increase ODA to Africa by$2.6 billion – there’s still work to be done!

A detailed blog on each country’s progress is forthcoming and is important for this story. Each G8 country made a different commitment. Some are doing better than others. More to come…

-Josh Lozman

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 12:37 pm and is filed under G8, DATA Report. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.