Western Arrogance
June 9, 2007
"We can certainly not impose anything on Africa on the basis of our European experience," Merkel told a podium discussion that included 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammed Yunus.
But the chancellor added that minimum standards in some areas had to be set for all countries.
"Globalization can only succeed if there are social minimum standards and minimum standards in the environment," she said. "We have to implement these."
Merkel, herself the daughter of a Lutheran minister, was rounding off a busy week with her attendance at the German Evangelical Church (EKD) ecumenical congress, held in the shadow of Cologne's famous Catholic cathedral.
Nearly 4,000 guests from abroad and more than 100,000 German participants have been attending the Lutheran congress which began Wednesday and wraps up on Sunday. It is one of Germany's most significant ecumenical events.
Merkel: Fair trade needed
On Friday, Merkel had met African leaders, including Ghaniaian President John Kufuor, current chairman of the African Union, in the northern German resort of Heiligendamm.
The G8 summit was just one of many steps on the road to a more just global economy, Merkel said.
"The poorest countries will only have a chance with their products if they have fair conditions of trade," she added.
The general secretary of the All Africa Conference of Churches, Bishop Mvume Dandala, said Europe should see Africans as partners rather than as supplicants or beggars.
Inhumane banking system?
Yunus, whose micro-credits to the very poor and especially to women secured him the Nobel Prize, outlined his vision of a new kind of development aid.
Two-thirds of humanity had no access to banks, he noted, querying whether the current banking system was humane.
Yunus explained how his home country Bangladesh is on the way to halve poverty by 2015 in line with UN goals.
Old promises?
At the G8 summit Merkel and Kufuor pledged to keep previous pledges - the G8 countries to implement the ambitious aid program outlined at Gleneagles two years ago and the African countries to fight corruption and ensure good governance.
The rich industrialized countries pledged a $60-billion (44.5-billion euro) fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, with half of it going to Africa, but non-governmental aid organizations were critical, saying most of the money promised was not new.