Other World South of Sahara
Apart from the energy security, other highlights of the G8 summit in St. Petersburg are infectious diseases, education and aid to the poorest states.
As of 2004, only 62 percent of children in the states south of Sahara had elementary education, says the report of the World Bank. And the indicator was just 56 percent for girls separately. Prevention of infectious diseases is a sorry case of equal extent.
In an effort to improve the situation, the G8 undertook at the previous summit to write off in part and in whole the debts of 18 poorest states of Africa. Another resolve of the summit was to widen by $50 billion the aid to the poorest, first of all to the African states. In line with that commitment of G8, it was announced in early this year that the debts of 19 states worth $3.3 billion would be written off
The June news was that Russia would write off $688 million of the debt and invest another $250 million of it in power engineering and public health systems of African countries as the setoff of its own debt to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
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All the Article in Russian as of July 13, 2006
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