The children came to school in an enthusiastic chaotic rush, beaming smiles that belied Shakespeare's description of the boy 'creeping like snail unwilling to school'. If these schoolchildren of Uganda are the future of the world, then there may be hope for us all, after all. Certainly, there is more hope from their enthusiasm and willingness to learn than from the cynically calculating leaders of the Group of Eight industrialised nations who this week guzzled a six-course lunch, then an 18-course dinner, while discussing the world food crisis. The Ugandan children were all in clean uniforms, though many were faded from multiple washings or heavily darned. Their noise abated as they filed obediently into their overcrowded classrooms that were testament to the battered economies of Africa. Most of the desks could have been transported from Victorian England. Some children had no desks and wrote on scraps of paper on uneven mud floors. Most classes contained 50 or more pupils. A few classrooms were gloomy with only a little light coming through cracked windows, but others were wide open to the air and wind and rain. In one school the straw roof had huge holes and in another most of the walls had been blown away in a storm 'some weeks ago', the head teacher said, 'but we have no money to repair them'. In my penultimate 'mission' for the World Bank (the self-righteous description staff use for their business trips), I saw a dozen schools in Uganda and neighbouring countries. I took hundreds of pictures before choosing one for the Word Bank calendar, to reflect the eagerness of the children to learn without dwelling on the overcrowded classroom or the primitive facilities. Indeed I rejected lots of pictures because they might be seen as stereotypes of 'poor Africa'. On publication of the calendar, there was an outcry. Prominent well-heeled Africans, most of whom had left Africa for tax-free US$120,000 plus salaries in Washington, lobbied the World Bank president and leading government representatives on the board for the calendar to be withdrawn. They complained that the picture did not show dynamic progressive Africa. Why, one protestor asked, had I not shown 'modern Africa with children at work at computers in air-conditioned classrooms?' After more than two years in Washington watching the self-serving politics of leading players in the bank, I was unsure which surprised me more: the hypocrisy that tried to distort a small effort to depict the human face of development; or the demand to paint a picture that did not exist. If African schools were widely equipped with computers and air-conditioning, then surely World Bank assistance was not needed. The reality of course is that Africa is still the sickest and the poorest continent (the average income of the 782 million people in sub-Saharan Africa is US$850). It has been hard hit by the scourge of HIV/Aids. It has suffered most from the recent rise in food prices, just as non-oil producing African countries are suffering from the sudden rise in oil prices. The double whammy of oil and food threatens to wipe out the benefits of a recent improvement in Africa-wide growth, 5 per cent a year over from 1999 to 2007. 'There is a new glow about Africa,' the World Bank declared this year. 'The continent is seeing its strongest economic growth since the 1970s.' There is still hypocrisy aplenty in Africa that is holding it back. Independent for half a century, African countries are still quick to blame colonialism for their own failures. South Korea had a wretched colonial inheritance, but was too busy developing to bother bleating about the past. The cosy club of African rulers is also in denial about manifold abuses of power in the continent. Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe is only the extreme case. Inflation is running at up to four million per cent, and Mr Mugabe's thugs continue brutally beating opponents, while South Africa and other Africans pretend that a softly-softly policy will work. But even with the best economic policies and an even political playing field to aid them, Africa will need outside help to fulfil its potential. Sadly, hypocrisy was top of the agenda at the G8 summit in Hokkaido. Former colonial powers France and Italy take the top award. They led attempts to dilute the commitment to increase aid to Africa made at the 2005 Gleneagles G8 summit. Then the self-styled leaders of the world promised to increase aid to Africa by US$25 billion a year by 2010. Three years on and two years to the target date, only US$3billion of the pledged money has been paid to Africa. Luckily, Britain and Germany resisted France's and Italy's efforts, but whether the west will keep its promises remains an open question. Apart from pop stars like Bono and Bob Geldof, many outsiders think of Africa merely as a source of resources. Maps of Africa in the Japanese press during the G8 highlighted their country's involvement, noting: 'Nigeria, oil; Ghana, bauxite, gold; Angola, oil, diamonds; Kenya, sodium carbonate, fluorite; Zambia, copper, cobalt, zinc etc.' China has a somewhat broader view, but Beijing's pandering to wretched dictators will hold back broad economic development of Africa. This is another good reason for giving China full G8 membership to influence and be influenced by global opinion. Japan again - stupidly - resisted suggestions that China get a top table seat, failing to understand that the longer China is denied, the more Japan's place is in jeopardy. Africa and Africans deserve better than being seen as a commodity source. Anyone who has seen its eager schoolchildren or watched Samuel Eto'o or Didier Drogba on the football field, or read Naguib Mahfouz or Chinua Achebe, or worked with Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the former Nigerian finance minister and now managing director of the World Bank, would understand Africa could be the continent of hope if the energy, intelligence and talent of its people could be released - if only there were not such a surfeit of hypocrisy. Kevin Rafferty has spent 30 years working as a journalist in Asia and two years as managing editor at the World Bank in Washington
