African leaders want G8 to shore up renaissance
AFP, Johannesburg
Six African leaders are going to the G8 summit this week to ask rich nations to become more involved in the continent's economic renaissance and to take notice of progress in building democracy and ending war. South Africa's Thabo Mbeki, Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria, Ghana's John Kufuor, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, Yuweri Museveni of Uganda and Senegal's Abdoulaye Wade will join the Group of Eight leaders at the Sea Island resort off the coast of the southern US state of Georgia on Thursday. "We have to get the G8 to begin to understand the necessity to have much more commitment ... to help us grow our economies," South Africa's junior foreign minister Aziz Pahad said ahead of the summit. Topping the agenda will be debt burden, agricultural subsidies for farmers from rich countries that are impacting on their peers in Africa and other developing regions, peacekeeping operations and the AIDS pandemic. In a summit likely to be dominated by the war in Iraq, the African leaders will also strive to highlight advances in democracy -- notably in South Africa, which feted its 10th anniversary since the end of apartheid -- as well as peace gains in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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