Joint Declaration By G8 And Africa

United States Department of State (Washington, DC)

27 May 2011

Joint Declaration By G8 And Africa

A joint declaration by African and G8 countries from the G8 Summit held in Deauville, France from May 26 to 27:

SHARED VALUES, SHARED RESPONSIBILITIES

1. The G8 and Algeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Senegal, and South Africa, and the African Union Commission, highlight the importance of an enhanced partnership between the G8 and Africa. Africa is on the move, and is becoming a new pole for global growth, even if challenges to be addressed remain, particularly in the least developed countries. The G8 and Africa stand side-by-side during this key time of change.

2. To reach our objectives, we are determined to further promote together shared values, notably peace and human rights, democratic governance and sustainable development, and we will continue to endorse our respective and shared responsibilities in this regard, in a spirit of mutual accountability.

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Economic Development and Environment

13. Africa is increasingly a destination for foreign investment and private sector development. The challenge today is to build on the current and positive dynamic of the African economy to achieve a more inclusive, shared and sustainable growth that creates jobs, ensures human security and empowers individuals, especially the younger generation. We need to intensify our efforts on drivers for economic growth, including human capital development, regional and global trade integration, business environment, domestic resources mobilization, and scaling up access to infrastructures and related services, including for energy, transport, information and communication technologies. In this regard, we welcome the conclusions of the 16th meeting of the Africa Partnership Forum (APF) on 21 April 2011 in Paris.

14. Beyond traditional official development assistance (ODA), African countries need to attract additional domestic and foreign direct investment to finance economic growth, while preserving debt sustainability. Mutual efforts to improve the regulatory framework and the business environment, and to fight corruption, need to be strengthened. To this end, we will establish a dialogue within the APF, involving business, to increase momentum and help remove obstacles to business environment reform. We encourage responsible investment by all stakeholders and call on companies to improve their corporate and social responsibility.

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16. Regional integration in Africa is also crucial to ensure the effective integration of the continent in the global markets. We reiterate our commitment to advance the process of trade liberalization and rule-making to strengthen the multilateral system, and are ready to explore all negotiating options to bring the Doha round to a conclusion including with regard to the priorities of least developed countries (LDCs) in line with the Doha mandate.

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18. Transparency in payments and revenue collection linked to extractive resources and sound financial governance on the management of these revenues are essential to taking full advantage of domestic resources and ensuring delivery of public goods and services for citizens.

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19. We will all continue to support transparency in other areas including through the full implementation of the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI). We call on all countries, notably resource-rich countries, and extractive companies to join or support this initiative....