In the G-8 meet­ing in Italy the world’s eight biggest economies opened the table to other emerg­ing economies. The invites are seen by many as admis­sion that the eight coun­tries alone can­not solve all the worlds problems.

Brazil, China, India, Mex­ico and South Africa pressed the G-8 on reopen­ing the Doha round of global trade talks. The hope is that a free trade agree­ment that removes bar­ri­ers would open more mar­kets to the goods of the under-developed world.

For the focus of our snip­pet, this Asso­ci­ated Press arti­cle tells us what the G-8 said about aid to the under­de­vel­oped world. Writer Colleen Barry made the trip to Italy.

On the issue of aid, Ital­ian Pre­mier Sil­vio Berlus­coni said Wednes­day that the lead­ers have decided they need to change the way they help Africa, and intro­duce a mech­a­nism of account­abil­ity to review efforts.

“We want our funds to go to pre­cise invest­ments, schools, build­ings and so on,” Berlus­coni told reporters.

On the issue of aid, Berlus­coni has said the G-8 was look­ing into estab­lish­ing an agri­cul­tural devel­op­ment fund for Africa, to shift away from giv­ing hand­outs to the poor to help­ing them grow their own food.

Italy has been under intense crit­i­cism going into the G-8 sum­mit for hav­ing main­tained only 3 per­cent of its aid pledges of $3.5 bil­lion to Africa made at a 2005 G-8 sum­mit in Gle­nea­gles, Scot­land. The G-8 at that time promised to increase aid to sub-Saharan Africa by US$25 bil­lion a year by 2010.

Berlus­coni has acknowl­edged Italy’s fail­ure to respect its Gle­na­gles aid pledges, but has said it only was a delay and that he had no other choice but to cut aid because of Italy’s mount­ing debts and the global finan­cial crisis.

“I’m sorry we didn’t keep our promises,” he said in an inter­view over the week­end with Bob Geldof, musi­cian and head of the anti-poverty group ONE, which has shamed Italy for its poor performance.

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