UNITED KINGDOM: Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown will meet his counterparts from 19 African nations next week to discuss ways of boosting economic development on the world's poorest continent. South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel will host the Jan. 17-18 meeting of the Commission for Africa, set up in February last year by U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair to fight poverty, disease and war. In other news, British Conservatives this week promised to match the government's spending on international aid but said they would trim GBP 800 million of waste from the aid budget and redirect it towards the world's poorest people, The Guardian (U.K.) reports. They said they would direct aid through non-governmental bodies and civil society groups rather than the EU or World Bank. In a speech to the Centre for Social Justice, shadow chancellor Oliver Letwin said a Conservative government would match Labour's plans to raise the Department for International Development's budget from GBP 4.5 billion to pounds 5.3 billion by 2007/08 and would boost aid spending to 0.7 percent of gross domestic product by 2013.
