Brussels, 21/05/2007 (Agence Europe) - A few days after the External Relations/Development Council, with Africa and European aid at the top of the agenda (see EUROPE 9427), attention will once again by focused on the African continent and European development policy, in Brussels on 24 May, when European Commission President José Manuel Barroso welcomes John Kufuor, president of Ghana and current president of the African Union, and several African and European aid players, “the voices of development aid”, to present their personal experience of European development policy. The aim is to highlight development ahead of the forthcoming G8 summit, taking place under German presidency in Heiligendamm on 6-8 June.
Last week, Mr Barroso met Bono, lead singer of the group U2 and representative of the “Make Poverty History” campaign, to urge G8 participants to meet global development assistance targets. “But it is equally important to bring to Brussels and to hear other voices that are anonymous, those that can best explain how the money from European taxpayers brings hope and support to the daily lives of millions of people around the globe,” said the development commissioner's spokesman, Amadeu Altafaj Tardio.
Among those invited to this meeting are young Europrean students who have become “European development ambassadors” promoting twinnings between European and African municipalities, a 17 year old Mozambican coordinator of youth radio programmes, notably AIDS prevention, whose training was helped by European funding, and a 22 year old Rwandan who lost her parents in 1994, and who has been helped to look after her brother by the EU-funded orphans of the genocide programme. (an)