Rich nations must stop their citizens laundering money, selling arms and looting resources in Africa in order to help the continent fight poverty, a UK expert on Thursday quoted a draft of a British-backed report as saying.
The final report, commissioned by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, is due to be presented to the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations and the European Union (EU) when Britain chairs both organisations next year.
Blair is in the Ethiopian capital and on Thursday and Friday will attend the final meeting of the Commission for Africa before it publishes its report next year.
Richard Dowden, Director of Britain's Royal Africa Society, told Reuters an early draft shows Britain plans to advise the world's powerful nations that they can help Africans perhaps as much by stopping a range of harmful practices as by giving more and better aid.
"That's quite a significant change of attitude," Dowden said on the sidelines of a meeting of the report's authors.
"What's interesting in the report is the emphasis on what the West should stop doing, things that hurt Africa's chances, like money laundering, stolen resources and the arms trade."
"What they're stumbling across as they drill down into the research is that the West is complicit in Africa's impoverishment and corruption and Western countries are part of the problem and not enough part of the solution."
Dowden, who is on a visit to Ethiopia, is an influential voice in Britain's involvement in Africa but is not a member of Blair's Commission, which is made up of African and Western politicians as well as financial and humanitarian experts.
They include Ethiopia Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and Anna Tibaijuka, Tanzanian head of the UN Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) and the most senior African woman working in the UN system, and France's Michel Camdessus, former managing director of the International Monetary Fund.
Notable political absentees are South African President Thabo Mbeki and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, architects of Africa's own home-grown campaign against poverty called the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).
G8 nations have to date given a lukewarm response to NEPAD, which seeks increased outside investment in Africa in return for greater democracy and a campaign on corruption.
Dowden, a former Economist journalist who has been leaked a draft of the report, says it calls for a doubling of foreign aid to Africa to between $15 billion and $20 billion a year, with much of it being given in budget support to African governments.
But alongside this call is a warning to rich nations that their citizens and companies engage in a range of harmful practices that must be curbed or stopped if Africa is to have a chance to lift itself out of poverty, Dowden says.
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