Aid to Africa stalled last year and overall aid spending fell, jeopardising the Group of Eight industrial nations’ commitment to double assistance to the continent and add $50bn a year to global aid by 2010.

At the G8 summit in Gleneagles in 2005, Tony Blair, UK prime minister, extracted pledges from heads of government to spend $50bn more each year to 2010 on aid, with half the rise going to sub-­Saharan Africa.