Bottom-up poverty plan for Africa needed

Second, experience shows that constant vigilance about transparency, especially with regard to national budgets, is critical.

Thieves have more to hide. Regimes run by kleptocrats are more likely to fumble and fall, with wider security implications.

But it is not just African budgets that must be more transparent.

One of the great scandals in development is the lack of good statistics to measure progress — this area needs much more investment.

Another scandal is the hypocrisy of most high-profile global promises, such as the vague billions alluded to at the Copenhagen climate-change summit.

Donors must be clearer about what is really new money.

Canada’s effort to chart all existing G8 development promises and improve accountability is especially important in this regard.

Companies doing business in Africa must also be more transparent, as must the international banking system, so bribery can be exposed and stolen funds tracked down and recovered.

Third, private investment can also drive the citizens’ strategy.

Proliferating mobile telephony is allowing Africans to leap digitally from the Third World into the First.

Africa has tremendous renewable energy potential that is ripe for investment.

African stocks have been doing well, although this has been barely noticed by investors abroad.

This summer’s soccer World Cup in South Africa is an opportunity for a rising generation of African entrepreneurs to present this new image of their continent, a chance that must be seized.

We propose a new “Africa Rising” fund to capture the moment — campaigners who once rightly called for disinvestment to help end the injustice of apartheid can now call for new investment to help fight the injustice of poverty.

These measures can increase the effects of much-needed new investments to boost education, agriculture and health and fight infectious diseases and climate change. Without them, reversals may occur.