Africa's poor governance and Western donors' lackluster performance on aid, debt and trade pledges are hindering Africa's growth and development, an international trade development agency warned on Monday.

In a statement issued in Nairobi ahead of the May 30-31 Africa's Finance Minister's conference in Accra, Ghana, ActionAid International said aid can be used to bolster investments in infrastructure, energy and social sectors.

Africa will not be able to achieve Millennium Development Goals within the next 50 years unless governments increase transparency in the use of public funds and rich countries take steps to fulfill and coordinate their aid promises and promote just trade regimes with Africa, said the statement.

In a five page communiqu?? to the Finance Ministers, the organization said the current 80 million children out of school require 9 billion U.S. dollars each year to access primary education.

"It is a travesty of justice that debt relief is still counted as new aid when most countries finished paying the capital sums lent to them and have in fact been forced to repay 4 dollars for every dollar they had originally borrowed," said Brian Kagoro ActionAid's Pan African Policy Manager.

But aid to sub Saharan Africa, the organization said, has stalled at 23 billion dollars despite G8's commitment to double aid to Africa to 50 billion dollars by 2010.

By 2006 only five of the major donor countries had met their target of giving 0.7 percent of their gross national income as aid to developing countries.

Globally, the Organization for Economic Co-operative and Development (OECD) countries provided 103.9 billion dollars including large amounts in debts relief to Nigeria and Iraq. This is 5.1 percent less aid in 2006 than in 2005.

"While large aid promises remain unfulfilled, present heavily tied donor aid continues to be used as an instrument for circumventing and at times subverting national priorities and needs," Kagoro said.

ActionAid said only five donor countries have untied their aid and most conditions imposed by international donors are not in tandem with national priorities and needs.

This undermines the long term development prospects for Africa , the report says.

It says international donors should guarantee recipient governments' fiscal autonomy and advance new aid as grant to avoid perpetuating Africa 's debt trap.

"They must provide space for Africa 's development policy and processes to be determined and informed by citizens' priorities and needs,"the report says.

For their part, African governments should take deliberate steps to ensure citizens have a right and access to public information to strengthen transparency and accountability as well as improve efficiency in the use of public resources.

As the Finance Ministers meet in Accra, the organization said, only few of the commitments they made in the African finance ministers meeting in Abuja in 2006 have been fulfilled.

The ministers committed to make information available to promote accountability and enable independent monitoring of progress, but most existing laws in the majority of countries restrict citizens from accessing public information and governments exercise undue control over media.

"This detracts from some of the progress so far made by African governments towards ownership of development processes and policies by citizens,"it said.

Malaria, AIDS and Tuberculosis continue to ravage Africa, yet only a paltry five of 53 African countries have met their target of dedicating 15 percent of their budgets to health.

ActionAid said investments in agriculture and education are still well below agreed international targets and called for national governments to institutionalize independent monitoring of governments and donor financial and other transactions to make real their commitments

"National governments should prioritize financing of programs that guarantee the right of women and marginalized groups to access, own and control productive resources to promote equitable development," it said.

The organization urged governments to abolish user fees in health and education services and allocate more resources to promote public health care and citizens rights to education.

"We demand that rich countries and donors sequence their economic policies to fit with Africa's development strategies even as they (national governments) promote accountability to citizens, "it said.

"Key among this is removal of wage restrictions by donors in health and education sectors to increase and retain qualified personnel for both."

Source: Xinhua