AFRICA: Many commentators believe Africa needs a fair trade policy more than an aid policy, reports Rob Crilly in Nairobi
When Tony Blair gathered the heads of the G8 nations and other African leaders together for a press conference at the close of the Gleneagles summit last week, one figure in the third row cast a long shadow over all the pledges of aid and promises of action.
Meles Zenawi, prime minister of Ethiopia and a member of Tony Blair's Commission of Africa, should have been living proof that good governance and democracy can triumph over the corruption and political infighting that has held Africa back for decades.
Since leading his rebels into government 11 years ago he has been credited with introducing Ethiopia's first multiparty elections in the country's 2000-year history.
Instead, the man who was once billed as a new breed of African leader serves as a reminder of what can go wrong. Last month his security forces gunned down 36 political protesters amid allegations of a vote-rigging scandal.
John O'Shea, chief executive of Goal, said: "It was a horrendous PR blunder in my opinion, and more importantly a horrendous humanitarian blow to have Meles Zenawi at the event.
"He should be in jail for what he has done." For many observers, Africa's ability to deliver democracy and root out corruption remains the big question hanging over last week's package of aid and debt relief.
Only time will tell whether this deal will go the same way as other failed attempts to lift Africa out of poverty, but for now it is worth asking - a week after the Live8 concerts and as the last of the Africa season television programmes are aired - has the Gleneagles summit lived up to the huge level of expectation?
Seasoned G8 watchers say the summit has delivered concrete pledges, rather than the vague aspirations of previous years.
"This is the single most successful summit in the 30-year history of this event," Professor John Kirton, director of the G8 research group at Toronto University, told the BBC.
Bob Geldof, Live 8 organiser, and Tony Blair can point to a series of key agreements.
Debts of the world's 18 poorest countries will be written off, G8 nations will increase aid to impoverished African nations by $50 billion, and Mr Blair said trade talks in Hong Kong later this year should yield an end to the agricultural subsidies that undercut farmers in Africa.
But the closer you get to a continent where an estimated 20,000 children die every day from preventable causes, then the more it seems like too little too late.
African leaders and aid workers have broadly welcomed the pledges but also asked that the pledges be turned into action quickly and implemented without strings.
For now, they must wait five years for the promised aid increases to take effect.
David Mwiraria, Kenyan finance minister, said: "Intentions and actualisations are not the same thing. We would like to see a situation where there is money now."
Njeri Kinyoho, Global Coalition Against Poverty co-ordinator for Africa, said: "It is a welcome decision. It is a step in the right direction. But I would treat it with caution because for as long as that $50 billion plus whatever else they are going to release will come with conditions, then obviously it will be undermining the very campaign we are trying to champion."
And then there is trade. Many African commentators believe it offers the only way for poor nations to pull themselves up the development ladder.
Aid can help, but it is only by removing subsidies and trade barriers in the developed world can African farmers win access to lucrative overseas markets.
In the end the G8 could offer no promises only what it described as a "signal" ahead of world trade talks in December.
"Trade should have been made a higher priority. In the final analysis, it is the one thing that can help developing countries achieve sustainable growth," said Getahun Tafesse, researcher at the Ethiopian Economic Policy Research Institute.
"Aid has a short-term effect. In the long term, in order to help the economies of these countries become very dynamic, they need to be able to compete in international markets and to be able to export their products."