"African countries should no longer go begging to the West" -Muammar Qaddafi

The Economist has an interesting article on one of the topics we have discussed here. The link to the article is in the title (above):

"So documents like the recent report of the Commission for Africa, set up last year by Britain's Tony Blair to 'take a fresh look at Africa' and how to develop it, burst with enthusiasm for the AU and Nepad. In turn, these two bodies have explicitly promised to uphold human rights and democracy, to fight corruption and promote good governance. And both outfits promise to hold their members to account, to prod them to meet these stringent criteria.

The most explicit mechanism for doing so is Nepad's African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). The 23 countries who have so far joined this voluntary scheme all offer themselves up for scrutiny by a panel of outside experts. Confidential reports are then handed to the subject governments, and a programme of action for improvements in such things as transparency and democratic accountability is agreed on and made public. At least, that is the plan. Last week, the experts handed their verdicts to the first two guinea pigs, Ghana and Rwanda; final reports and action plans are due out next month.

The implicit deal with rich countries is that if the AU and Nepad can start to enforce western standards of financial transparency and democracy in African countries, then more aid will flow their way to foster the good work."