At the COMESA summit in Kampala, and again at the G8 summit in Sea Island, Georgia, the predicament of poor countries came under scrutiny, writes Gamal Nkrumah Last week's summit meeting of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), in the Ugandan capital Kampala, proved to be a golden opportunity for the region's leaders to review prospects for boosting development and trade. The Kampala meeting also provided a chance for COMESA leaders to take stock of the challenges facing the region; one of Africa's poorest and most politically volatile. Several COMESA member states are embroiled in civil wars that have claimed the lives of millions of people -- Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Rwanda. Even the host nation Uganda is battling insurrectionists, the notorious Lord's Resistance Army, in the north of the country. Be that as it may, COMESA leaders agreed to push for a new framework on regional integration and world trade talks. They also worked to further reduce or totally remove mutual trade barriers. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni took his duty as host seriously. "We can no longer continue to talk about regional economic integration without taking measures that will bring a single social, political and economic space," he said. Africa is striving to increase its share of world gross domestic product (GDP), trade and investment. But to do so it must sustain a growth rate of over seven per cent a year coupled with strong export performance. COMESA, a huge market encompassing some 400 million people, includes 19 African states -- Angola, Burundi, Comoros, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sudan, Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Mozambique and Tanzania withdrew from the regional economic grouping several years ago. The Zambia-based COMESA, set up in December 1994 to replace the Preferential Trade Area for Eastern and Southern Africa, has a combined gross national product (GNP) of $220 billion, but there are significant income and development disparities among member states. Some of the world's poorest and least developed countries are members of COMESA, including Burundi, Comoros, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Sudan. Wealthier countries like Egypt and Kenya have better developed and more versatile industrial bases. No less than 13 heads of state and government participated at the ninth COMESA summit. Egypt was represented by a high-level delegation headed by Prime Minister Atef Ebeid. "As we deepen integration among the COMESA member states, there will be increased opportunities for the region's business communities to exploit and benefit from the free flow of goods and services, resulting in greater trade and investment flows among our countries," said Malawi's newly-elected President Bingu wa Mutharika, who attended the COMESA meeting for the first time. Most COMESA countries have "inherited a colonial system of economic management where we literally produced what we did not consume and consumed what we did not produce", the Malawian president explained. "This," he said, "accounted for our inability to take advantage of globalisation." Mutharika pleaded for the removal of trade barriers between COMESA member states. "The COMESA countries are increasingly unable to take advantage of the global market expansion as their industries remain uncompetitive," he explained. The countries of COMESA "face enormous development challenges requiring concerted efforts in attracting investments", Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa concurred. Intra-COMESA trade increased by 15 per cent to $5.3 billion from $4.5 billion in 2002, and trade among developing countries grew by 11 per cent as opposed to 4.5 per cent overall. It is widely hoped that the COMESA Free Trade Area (CFTA) set up in October 2000, and the COMESA Customs Union scheduled for December 2004 will further increase the volume of trade between COMESA member states. COMESA leaders called for member states to forge closer cooperation and deepen economic ties in order to bolster their demands for more equitable trade in the international arena. The COMESA conference came days before the meeting of the leaders of the world's eight wealthiest and most industrially advanced countries -- the so-called G8. President Museveni of Uganda was among six African leaders invited by the G8 leaders to participate on the fringes of the summit. The six African leaders met with their G8 counterparts on the final day of the G8 summit. "African governments are under tremendous pressure to institute structural adjustment programmes," spokesman for Jubilee USA Network, Neil Watkins, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "African debt is a mechanism of control used by the US government. When it is politically expedient to cancel the debt of Pakistan or Iraq the US government will not hesitate to do so," Watkins added. "Jubilee USA Network calls for the 100 per cent cancellation of Africa's debt without any strings attached," Watkins told the Weekly. "By failing to seize the opportunity, the G8 has once again chosen baby steps over bold action." He described the G8 plan to extend conditional debt relief to a select few "heavily indebted poor countries" (HIPC) as "wholly inadequate and off target", adding that G8 plans for the world's poor and indebted nations "offered nothing new or concrete". The HIV/AIDS pandemic is another serious concern for many COMESA member states, though inroads have been made in combating the dreaded disease. The host nation Uganda, in particular, has been singled out for international acclaim because of its success in reducing the number of people infected with HIV/AIDS. In the early 1990s the rate of HIV infection in Ugandan cities was as high as 30 per cent. But today only six per cent of Ugandans are infected with HIV. Uganda is the only African country that has successfully managed to reverse the tide of HIV/AIDS infections. A recently completed study published in the prestigious journal Science revealed that the number of HIV-infected cases in Uganda dropped by 70 per cent since the mid-1990s. The study concluded this was largely due to an exceptionally well- thought out public education campaign. US President George W Bush has singled out Uganda for commendation, praising the small, land- locked East African country of 22 million people as the model for his $15 billion initiative on HIV/AIDS in Africa. However, "in 2003, the G8 governments promised to fulfil shared obligations to deliver on the commitments they agreed to in the United Nations Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS in 2001. In 2004, AIDS is not even on the G8 agenda. If anything, we are moving backwards," said Marcel van Soest, director of World AIDS Campaign. "Once again, the now traditional invitation of African leaders to participate has only served to highlight the asymmetry of power between rich and poor nations, and the growing disparity between the world's wealthy minority and the impoverished majority," warned Salih Booker, director of the US- based Africa Action. More than 30 million Africans are living with HIV/AIDS and only two per cent have access to life-saving treatment. Many of them are in COMESA countries.
