The United Nations Human Development Report Office this week released preliminary figures from the 2005 human development report projecting that the UN's millennium development goals will be missed by a wide margin in Africa. The UN undertook in 2000 to halve the number of people living on less than a dollar a day, to cut infant mortality by two thirds, and to give every child primary education by 2015.
But according to the latest figures, the UN is now predicting five million deaths in children younger than 5 in the year 2015, worse than current rates, and three million more than the millennium development goal. Between now and 2015, the UN predicted 29 million children under five will die as a result of the failure to reach the target. Ten African countries have worse infant mortality rates now than in 2000, and another 29 countries are on course to meet the infant mortality development goal more than 35 years late.
Current trends will mean that Africa will still have more than 40 million unschooled children in 2015, and the number of Africans living on less than a dollar a day will in fact rise by 219 million.
The elimination of many African countries' crippling debt burden was looking like a realistic prospect this week, however, as the United States' government agreed in principle that the G8 countries (the world's most industrialised countries), which are due to meet in Scotland next month, will reimburse the World Bank for the lost revenue from cancelled interest payments.
Prime Minister Tony Blair extracted the concession from the Bush administration during his visit to Washington. The US government has long been in favour of debt cancellation, but has argued that the World Bank should absorb the losses from its own development budget. Initially, it seemed that the White House would be unwilling to budge from this position, but President Bush has come under strong domestic pressure to reward Mr Blair for his loyalty in Iraq and to improve the image of the US abroad.
The debt cancellation plan could encompass as many as 20 African countries, although details still have to be hammered out. Mr Blair said, "I think we are well on the way. I hope we can, if we are able to, conclude a deal at the finance ministers' meeting this weekend—one that will involve 100% debt cancellation." The G8 finance ministers are due to meet in London this weekend to prepare for next month's summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.
At a joint press conference with Mr Blair, President Bush also announced an immediate $674m (£367m; €547m) in aid for Ethiopia and Eritrea. Aid agencies were quick to note, however, that the money was not new spending but was drawn from funds already allocated by Congress to overseas development aid.
Although agreement on debt relief seems around the corner, on questions of aid and trade the G8 members are still worlds apart. Last week, the member states of the European Union made a formal commitment to increase their overseas development budgets to 0.7% of gross national income, in line with promises first made at the UN General Assembly in 1970, and reiterated in the Monterrey commitments of 1992. To date, no country has ever achieved that figure. Britain, which gives 0.31% of its gross national income in aid, has now promised to reach 0.7% by 2013.
The United States, however, continues to lag far behind the average, spending only 0.18% of its gross national income on aid. Speaking in Washington, Mr Blair called on rich nations to immediately double aid to Africa to $25bn annually, increasing to $50bn from 2015. But Mr Bush chose not to endorse these figures, which were recommended by the report of Mr Blair's Commission for Africa.
Washington has also made clear its opposition to the international finance facility proposed by the British chancellor, Gordon Brown, to expedite the delivery of aid. But Mr Brown said this week that Britain will go ahead with a less ambitious project backed by the EU and the Bill Gates Foundation, which will make $4bn available in the next decade for vaccination projects.
With the pivotal G8 summit less than a month away, aid agencies are desperate to sustain the recent momentum on poverty reduction. A group of G8 and African parliamentarians also sought to pile the pressure on G8 leaders, issuing the Edinburgh Declaration, which calls on G8 countries to double aid to Africa by 2010; eliminate agricultural export subsidies; and focus on improving the status, health, and rights of women.
Mr Blair's other priority for the upcoming G8 summit, action on global warming, is also likely to run into stiff opposition from a US government that argues that the scientific evidence for climate change is still inconclusive. In an open letter to G8 leaders plus India, China, and Brazil, the national academies of science of all the G8 nations plus India and Brazil said that climate change is real, current, and caused by human activity. "The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action," said the letter, which was cosigned by Bruce Alberts, president of the US National Academy of Sciences.
But observers are pessimistic that Gleneagles will herald a substantial shift in American thinking on the issue. Earlier this month, President Bush's chief climate negotiator Harlan Watson said the science on climate was still uncertain and did not merit urgent action.