Africa acknowledges it must help itself

摘要

While the leaders of eight of the world's richest countries gathered this week at Gleneagles in Scotland, their African counterparts, who run most of the world's poorest countries, gathered at the coastal town of Sirte, in Libya, for their own jamboree under the aegis of the African Union (AU). Despite a vast gulf in media coverage of the two meetings, they were, in fact, tightly linked. For in the new mood of scaling up aid to the poorest countries, Africa's own institutions, with the AU to the fore, are now being expected by rich countries to shoulder more of the burden for curing the continent's ills.