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LEADERS of the 20 most powerful countries in the world met for the annual G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia at the weekend to deliberate on various issues affecting the world particularly economic growth. As is the norm at these gatherings, there was a lot of focus on addressing challenges affecting developing countries even though most of the Third World and mainly African nations were not represented. South Africa is the only African country with a membership of the G20 but its lone voice is often drowned out by more powerful nations. With China assuming a more prominent role in world affairs due to its rapidly growing economy, much of the talk at this year’s summit was on trade deals it is striking with the likes of the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.

On Saturday, G20 leaders vowed to extinguish the Ebola epidemic ravaging West Africa but made no pledges of cash. This was despite spirited appeals by relief organisations such as Oxfam and Save the Children who urged the G20 to band together to ensure that the right resources are made available in terms of staff, equipment and funding.

Rocker turned activist Bob Geldof — one of the forces behind a 30th anniversary version of a charity single titled “Do they know it’s Christmas” — was scathing in his criticism of rich nations’ response to Ebola saying if they “kept the promises they make at these big G8 meetings and the like, we wouldn’t have to be standing here”.

Artists including One Direction, U2 front man Bono, Cold Play’s Chris Martin and Sinead O’Connor, recorded the single to raise funds and awareness around Ebola. In a communiqué, G20 leaders pledged to eradicate Ebola. “G20 members are committed to do what’s necessary to ensure the international effort can extinguish the outbreak and address its medium-term economic and humanitarian costs,” the leaders said.

Ebola has killed more than 5 000 people in West Africa and the international community has been criticised for not doing enough to stem its spread.

More was expected from the G20 summit on Ebola but the leaders of the most powerful nations in the world chose to focus on issues affecting them directly.

US President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, leaders of the two biggest economies in the world, committed to reform measures aimed at lifting their collective growth by an extra 2.1 percent by 2018. “This will add more than $2 trillion to the global economy and create millions of jobs,” the leaders said.

The absence of a strong voice of the poor and weaker nations at the G20 summit has come in for stinging criticism and with good reason. In a statement ahead of the summit, Professor Emmanuel Nnadozie, the Executive Secretary of African Capacity Building Foundation in Harare, said the leaders of the G20 countries would be deliberating on issues that would have ramifications for not only their respective economies but also the rest of the world, including those who will not be represented at the deliberations.

He said Africa was under-represented in the body with South Africa being the continent’s sole member, meaning that Africa’s views were not adequately canvassed.

“Also, since the Chairpersons of the African Union and the Nepad Planning and Coordinating Agency who are usually invited as observers to G20 meetings change every year, it makes continuity and effective representation difficult. To further buttress the point about Africa’s under-representation, the Association of African Central Banks, unlike its peers in other regions, is not a member of the Financial Stability Board, another body comprising the Finance Ministers and central bankers of member countries, which meets regularly to take crucial decisions affecting the global economy,” said Prof Nnadozie.

We agree with him and feel it is time bodies such as G20 reformed and incorporated other nations into their club. Africa can no longer remain on the margins where global leaders are making decisions on the world economy and the continent has a duty to convince the grouping to address its major concerns, particularly the strengthening of productive capacity, increasing productivity, value addition and accelerated industrialisation.

We feel the Ebola epidemic did not receiver the kind of attention it deserved at the summit because of Africa’s under-representation.