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                        <font size="1">Listers</font></div>



<div id="box"><div id="article-header"><div id="main-article-info"><h1><font size="1">Leaders are expected to agree on a 
"nine-pillar" plan tomorrow that is intended to become a guide to 
strengthening cooperation between developed and emerging economies. <br></font></h1><h1><font size="1">The 
nine pillars are infrastructure building, trade promotion, human 
resources development, private investment, job creation, domestic 
resources mobilisation, growth with resilience efforts, financial 
inclusion and knowledge sharing.G20: free-trade area for Africa proposed by UK and South Africa.</font></h1>
                                
                                        <p id="stand-first" class="stand-first-alone"><font size="4">Anti-poverty strategy
 co-sponsored by Jacob Zuma and former Labour minister Baroness Vadera 
aims to bring 26 African countries together in a trading bloc</font></p>
                
                                
        </div><br></div><div id="content"><a class="contributor" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/patrickwintour">Patrick Wintour</a> and <a class="contributor" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/phillipinman">Phillip Inman</a> in Seoul<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/">, guardian.co.uk</a>,                      
                                                                                                                                                
                                            Thursday 11 November 2010 15.23 GMT<ul class="article-attributes"><li class="publication"><br></li><div id="article-wrapper">
                        
                        
                                                        <img src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/11/11/1289488845340/Baroness-Shriti-Vadera-006.jpg" alt="Baroness (Shriti) Vadera" height="276" width="460">
                                                                  Baroness Vadera, the former Labour minister, now a
 G20 adviser and the co-sponsor of the Africa free trade area 
initiative. Photograph: Graeme Robertson
                                                                        
        
        <p>A free trade area for Africa, to help the impoverished continent 
match the spectacular growth of Far East economies, emerged as a 
distinctive British initiative at the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/g20" title="More from guardian.co.uk on G20">G20</a> summit today.</p><p>The
 anti-poverty strategy, which is partly the brainchild of former Labour 
minister turned G20 adviser Baroness Vadera, has been developed with 
Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa.</p><p>David Cameron, speaking
 at a business summit in Seoul today, said: "We should explain that free
 trade is good for the poorest parts of our world as well, and one thing
 the British have been very active in trying to insert into this G20 is a
 free-trade area for Africa.</p><p>"Africa should be a growing part of 
the world economy: we should be lifting more people out of poverty in 
Africa. But we will not do it with all the trade barriers that exist 
between African countries."</p><p>There are currently three distinct 
free trade areas within Africa, but a meeting in January of the 
continent's major powers is designed to create a single free trade 
entity spanning 26 countries.</p><p>However, anti-poverty campaigners 
warned that a new approach focused on growth must not be used as an 
excuse to wriggle out of aid promises. "That's got to be the worry – 
that there's the appeal of the new, and that promises that are quite 
painful to deliver in the current climate are gone," said Adrian Lovett,
 global campaign director for Save the Children.</p><p>Save the Children
 said that of $25bn in aid promised by the G8 countries in 2005, only 
$12bn has been delivered, and warned that <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/development" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Development">development</a> progress could be derailed by the economic crisis.</p><p>

Zuma,
 who is attending the G20 meeting, said the summit is also expected to 
launch major investments in infrastructure and skills development in 
developing countries, to help rebalance the world economy by creating 
new centres of demand outside the flagging economies of North America 
and Europe.</p><p>A battle earlier in the year – in part waged by 
Vadera, who was helped into her current role by her former boss, Gordon 
Brown – has ensured that the issue of international development is now 
appearing on the G20's agenda, having previously been seen exclusively 
as the preserve of the G8.</p><p>Leaders are expected to agree on a 
"nine-pillar" plan tomorrow that is intended to become a guide to 
strengthening cooperation between developed and emerging economies. The 
nine pillars are infrastructure building, trade promotion, human 
resources development, private investment, job creation, domestic 
resources mobilisation, growth with resilience efforts, financial 
inclusion and knowledge sharing.</p><p>Vadera, a former investment 
banker who was ennobled by Brown, points out that South Korea is one of 
only two countries that has transformed itself from a low income country
 to a high-income country in just one generation. She argues that it 
achieved this not by following the traditional prescriptions of the 
World Bank or the IMF, but by using <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/internationaltrade" title="More from guardian.co.uk on International trade">international trade</a> as an essential component of its development policy.</p>

<p>She
 argues that it is not enough to rely on aid over the long term; 
instead, greater reliance on domestic resources is critical to build a 
more resilient economy and implement a home-grown development agenda.</p><br></div></ul><div id="dialogue"><div class="toolbox-popup" id="history-link-box" style="width: 460px;"><div class="send-inner"><div class="section">


                                <h1>G20: free-trade area for Africa proposed by UK and South Africa</h1>
                                                                                                                                        This article was published on
                                                        <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/">guardian.co.uk</a>
                                                        at 15.23 GMT on Thursday 11 November 2010. 
                                                A version appeared  in                                          <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian">the Guardian</a>
                                                on <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/nov/12">Friday 12 November 2010</a>. 
                                                
                                                                                                
                        
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