Please welcome Malulie Tongprasert to the ONE Blog. She is ONE’s new policy intern and will be focusing on agricultural development and innovative finance.
For the first time ever, Development and Finance Ministers from the G20 congregated last Friday September 23 in Washington, DC. The objective: underlining the need to address development challenges as part of the global economic agenda. Since the beginning of the G20 presidency by France, President Nicolas Sarkozy committed to making development one of his top priorities, and this G20 Development meeting is a strong sign for it. The G20’s pledge to work together to find solutions to key development issues demonstrates their willingness to meet this challenge head-on, but does this really mark the beginning of successful joint efforts?
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Ever since the US passed legislation last July ensuring that all oil, gas and mining companies would have to be far more transparent in their financial reporting, we have been pushing hard for similar action in Europe. We want all extractive companies around the world to publish what they pay the governments of the countries where the operate – therefore empowering local anti-corruption groups with the information they need to hold their leaders accountable for revenue received.
This campaign received a big boost on the weekend with the publication of a letter from President Sarkozy of France to ONE co-founder Bono announcing that he was prepared to show leadership on the issue. Bono had previously written an op-ed for Le Monde calling for exactly that.
The English text of the letter says:
“In your article, you bring up the need for transparency in the area of natural resources’ extraction in Africa. I completely agree with you. France is organising an experts’ conference on this issue in March in Paris. As of now, I have decided to ask the European Union to adopt, as speedily as possible, legislation to compel industries in the extractive sector to disclose their payments to all countries in which they operate.”
So congratulations to President Sarkozy and his team for championing such an important issue. Transparency campaigners across Africa will now be looking to you to carry this forward – and ensure that the wave of transparency reform does not lose momentum.
Bono has been blogging today from the United Nations’s Summit on the MDG’s in NYC. The below post he wrote after meeting with the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy. You can read his complete posts at FT.com.
Tough meeting with the Président de la République of France. He’s a tough guy. We like tough guys because they get straight down to business. They don’t waste their time or yours. The French budget is out this Friday and in it we will see if France intends continuing its leadership role on the continent of Africa. In the last few years, French aid has been falling.
My point was that as much as Africa needs French aid and the energy that Sarkozy himself provides, he/we need Africa. Why? Africa has never been so strategically important as it is now, economically and politically. Just ask…
Read the full post here.
-Virginia Simmons
