By David Sibbald - Founder of the Sumerian Foundation

I was at Gleneagles last Thursday attending an event (The Gleneagles Big Tent) focussed on reviewing what had or had not been achieved since the G8 met at Gleneagles in July 2005.

Gordon Brown, Kofi Annan, Wangari Maathi, Hilary Benn, Alan McDonald and Keith O'Brien all spoke. Kofi Annan was inspiring to listen to, a very dignified man who played the pivotal role in persuading all countries to sign up to the 8 Millenium Development Goals.

The day before the event the OECD published a report saying that 2006 aid had fallen by 5.1% over 2005 and that the G8 committments made at Gleneagles would now be tough to achieve by 2010. Wheter related to this or not, it caused the politicians to switch into a reflex action of delivering statistics, programs, new initiatives and new takes on old initiatives that made everyones head spin.

I'd say that too much is getting missed out of the development aid debate, in fact I'd say there is no serious debate (at least in public) about whether 40 years of aid has had a positive or negative impact on sub-saharan Africa in particular. The major funding agencies such as the World Bank and the IMF tend to mark their own homework, while increasingly you hear civic leaders in Africa such as the Centre for Humane Education in Ghana bemoan the negative impacts of aid as undermining people and economies while subsidising corruption and economic mis-manangement. I think the whole thing has become one-dimesional, the major western NGO's mobilise public opinion and demand greater levels of aid, governments respond (such as the G8 in Gleneagles) and then they berate each other over whether targets and promises have been met and that's the debate as far as I can see.

There's a West African proverb that says "one can only speak about the burden one is carrying" and I think we clearly see the images of poverty and destitution, but I don't think we understand nearly enough of the detail that dictates why it exists, why it has existed for so long and what helps and what hinders progress at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

Now that Kofi Annan is back from his well-deserved 3 month break, we'll hopefully see him re-engage in the debate around how to achieve his MDG's in a sustainable way.