Don't forget Africa at G8 and Copenhagen: Meles

By Andrew Cawthorne and Tsegaye Tadesse

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi headed to the G8 summit in Italy on Wednesday to remind rich nations of the disproportionate impact on Africa of the world economic crisis and global warming.

"The key message for us is to ask the G8 to live up to their commitments," said Meles, who has become something of a spokesman for Africa and is often invited to attend global meetings on the continent's behalf.

In an interview with Reuters shortly before flying to Italy, Meles said follow-through on financial pledges for Africa from the G20 summit earlier this year was "much, much better" than in the past, but still less than half.

"The promise was that something like $50 billion dollars would be made available to poorer countries. Slightly more than $20 billion of that is on hand. The rest needs to be fulfilled," he said.

Meles, a 54-year-old former rebel leader and self-taught economics expert, said development on the world's poorest continent had been set back by up to a decade by the global crisis. It has hit investment, aid and remittance inflows, as well as weakening markets for Africa's commodities.

With rich nations worried about their own economies, one way to make funds available to Africa would be to redirect unused Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) granted by the International Monetary Fund to member nations, Meles said.

"There are resources that could be tapped into without much commitment from the donor countries," he said.

"Those countries that have been given a lot of money in the form of new SDRs by the IMF could, if the bureaucratic arrangements are made, unlend (return) this money to some multilateral institution which could then direct it to Africa."