GEORGE MONBIOT, COLOMNIST, “THE GUARDIAN’: Well, there's not a lot happening right now, it's very early in the morning and it's very wet, it's pretty unpleasant. We're meant to be marching on Gleneagles today. The weather will put some people off.
The problem is that I feel our demands have been very diluted, they've been very poorly articulated, partly because of the conflict between what Live 8 and the leadership of make poverty history have done and the aims of the global justice movement in the wider sense.
They've been calling for a little bit less debt, a little bit more aid and we are calling for something much more fundamental and something more radical than that.

GEORGE NEGUS: You keep referring to we. Does this mean you're actually involved in the protests yourself?

GEORGE MONBIOT: I'm very much involved in it. I'm an activist, I have been for many, many years and I consider myself a member of the global justice movement and one of the fundamental tenants of this movement is that the rich nations should not have the power that they now exercise over the poor nations.
One of our problems is that the messages coming out of Live 8 and the leadership of make poverty history, have been far more diluted and far less radical than that and they leave the power structures in tact.

GEORGE NEGUS: Alan Oxley in Melbourne, where do you stand on the whole G8 summit?

ALAN OXLEY, TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANT: George just told you he's not mainstream, and he's not. He mightn't be wearing black but George is a self-avowed anarchist. He’s told you their solution to poverty is to throw over the institutions. There's a flavour that I must say, in the documentary that you've just aired where your reporter suggested that one of the problems in Malawi is the IMF and what was repeated there was a canard that was not true and has been allowed disallowed by the IMF that it was responsible for a collapse in grain in the time of drought.
The reason for the collapse of grain was a corrupt government, that’s the problem that we face in these countries, aid will help to some degree but we've got a problem of moral values and leadership in Africa, that's the problem we're facing, not a need for revolution.

GEORGE NEGUS: Going back to Live 8, which you have actually suggested are quite dangerous in the way they've approached things. Haven't they at the very least, raised the awareness of people to this problem to a far greater degree than has been done before?

GEORGE MONBIOT: Yes, it's a tremendous achievement. They've mobilised billions of people. They've built up a great enthusiasm for doing something. The question is doing what. In trying to respond to Alan it's hard to know where to begin. There's so many misstatement with what he said starting with the colour of my coat.
The problem with the international monetary fund is that it is controlled by the G8 nations, in fact specifically controlled by the United States. In order to pass any substantial resolution within it you need 85% chair of the vote and the US has got 17% of the votes. So it can veto any decision that the IMF tries to make.
Now what this means is that no decision passes which isn't in the interests of the US treasury by and inference the bankers on Wall Street and those interests are diametrically opposed to the interests of the poor nations in Africa.

GEORGE NEGUS: Alan we've obviously got a clear ideological difference between the two of you. The IMF and the world bank, part of the problem or part of solution, as you see them?

ALAN OXLEY: One has to ask why Africa hasn’t succeeded? Africa has received more aid than any other region. The institutions and systems he attacks are the very institutions which have seen more people lifted out of poverty in Asia and more people on higher standards of living than we've seen in human history.

GEORGE NEGUS: Most people would agree though that a greater accountability at least is required where both the IMF and the world bank are concerned.

ALAN OXLEY: Accountability for what George? I don't know what you're talking about.

GEORGE NEGUS: For how they give out their money and what they do with it.

ALAN OXLEY: They are a bank, people who hand their money over are entitled to see it spent properly. The question to ask is if other parts of the world like Asia can raise their standards of living in this system that Mombiot says is wrong and destroys humanity, why doesn't it work in Africa? The answer is not the system, the answer is a very deep endemic problem.

GEORGE NEGUS: In a few words George, I guess what we're saying is why give money to corrupt dictators in Africa, literally throwing it against the wall.

GEORGE MONBIOT: I'm afraid this discourse is the classic discourse of power. I've heard a lot of apologists for power and a lack of democracy. But Alan places himself squarely in the camp of those who used to support the monarchy against democracy. The idea that there shouldn't be democratic governance of institutions like this IMF is just outrageous.
On the question of corruption, it takes two to tango. The United Nations has a convention against corruption. There are so far 25 ratifiers of that convention, not a single one of them is a member of the G8.
Why is this corruption taking place? Yes, partly because there are greedy leaders in Africa but partly because there are greedy multinationals who are bribing those leaders and our G8 nations are doing absolutely nothing about them.
Sure, the response of African leaders to the situation in which they're thrown has often been woefully lacking and there have been terrible dictators, most of whom incidentally were backed to the hilt by us, by the world bank, by the IMF. What we see in Africa is that many countries have been deliberately kept where they are because they are cheap sources of resources, they are cheap sources of labour.

GEORGE NEGUS: Let me bring Alan in there. Short of regime change, ala Saddam Hussein, how do we deal with corrupt dictators where the current system is concerned?

ALAN OXLEY: What should we do with the money, all this aid money? I think what we should do is set up the world's biggest scholarship fund and bring every young African who's interest on a scholarship to train in countries that work, let them see how it's done, let them go back to their own countries and build a new moral leadership for their countries.

GEORGE NEGUS: Debt cancellation George, is that going to help?

GEORGE MONBIOT: It will help a little bit George, but while the structures are still in place which cause the debt in the first place you get rid of one debt and another one takes it place.
The idea that Alan articulates that the Africans can not only be blamed for the problem but the problem can be sorted out by extracting from them from their continent and teaching them what's good for them, teaching them how the west does it and how the west is best, takes us back to a paternal imperialism I thought we put behind us in 1920.

ALAN OXLEY: What it doesn't do is take us back 20 years to the sort of system George would of, approved of which was a communist system. To me it's pointless to have this discussion.

GEORGE MONBIOT: I'm not advocating communism. I'm advocating the sort of regulated economy which a lot of African countries had between 1960 and 1980 when growth in Africa averaged between 3% and 5% a year.
Between 1980 and 2000 with the programs implemented by the IMF and the world bank, growth in Africa actually fell by 5%. China's success has taken place despite the IMF, despite the world bank. It's turned its back on them.
If Alan thinks the choice is a choice between raw neo-liberal capitalism and state capitalism on the other hand, then he's utterly blinkered and incapable of seeing the subtleties an the diversity of responses which are out there for African nations to grasp if they want.

GEORGE NEGUS: Alan, George Bush has thrown down the gauntlet saying to the Europeans if you drop your subsidisation process so will we. Will this do anything to assist the situation?

ALAN OXLEY: Africa's problems is it's economies don't work. The sorts of models where George is talking about where he likes some sort of regulation but not too much, has actual flattened growth in Africa. You can't trade unless your economy functions.

GEORGE NEGUS: Alan you have said the Africans have got precious little to trade. Do you agree with that, George?

GEORGE MONBIOT: The Africans have got a great deal to trade. In fact we've been ripping the resource out of that continent for 500 years and we've been forcing them to trade for a very, very long time.
To suggest that a regulated model doesn't work suggests that Alan has never read a history book. Between 1960 and 1980 Africa had growth rates of 3% to 5% a year with a far more regulated model, far more State intervention, far more spending on health and education than they are allowed to engage in today.
They're forbidden to engage in spending large amounts of money on health and education, which is all sensible economists agree is absolutely necessary if you are to stimulate economic growth and they are forbidden from doing so by the IMF and the world bank who are of course controlled by the United States and the other G8 nations.

ALAN OXLEY: That model which administered Africa the post colonial model with all those socialist states, so wasted the wealth in the country that nothing was left. That's what's happened in Malawi right now. You've had 40 years of the government we're talking about and now the economy's wrecked.

GEORGE NEGUS: Could we finish off here with this question, Jeffrey Sax who is an economic mentor to the likes of Bob Geldof and Bono has said whatever we do, it won't be to the year of 2025, that we will get anywhere near the end of poverty or even close to it.

GEORGE MONBIOT: In order to start that process we have to get on the path and we're not on the path. We’re implementing policies which ensure that Africa can't pull it's its way out of poverty.

GEORGE NEGUS: Alan.

ALAN OXLEY: 20 years did you say for ending of poverty. Look at growth rates in Asia when market rates were opened. I think it can be quicker than that, but not following George Monbiots’ perscriptions.

GEORGE NEGUS: Thank you for your time. I'm sure the debate could go on. Thank you for your time at this point. Thank you.