It hasn't just been Civil Society and UN officials criticizing the G8 outcomes. Around the globe, newspapers' opinion pages have had harsh words for the G8 leaders.

•  A backwards step: The G8's reneging on past pledges is deeply damaging

 Financial Times (Editorial), June 8

G8 leaders failed to recognize the urgent situation facing the world’s poor at their summit in Heiligendamm June 6-8, and instead backtracked on previous commitments made.

The G8 today announced their decision on “a commitment of $60 billion for AIDS, TB and malaria money.” But beneath the spin, dazzling the world with numbers, in fact they have just ‘reannounced’ their existing aid budgets, with only $3 billion in new money. This is miles off the 2005 promise of $50 billion new aid a year needed to halve poverty, and while important in the fight against HIV / AIDS, should be seen for what it is – a small step when we need a big leap.

As I head to the Baltic coast of Germany to prepare for the outcomes of another G8 Summit there is an ominous air to the news I am hearing from my colleagues on the ground there. It would seem that despite the outstanding mass mobilisation of people in Germany and London, where I was, last Saturday, the handover of a petition containing over a million voices to Angela Merkel and Tony Blair in Berlin on Sunday, their call is in danger of falling on deaf ears, again.

Today we spent the morning getting up to speed on the latest developments and getting settled at the press centre. The emergency meeting of officials this morning still failed to resolve either the debates over the financial commitments in the Africa communiqué or the ongoing debacle over climate. It still appears that Italy and Canada remain the main laggards pushing back against even a reiteration of Gleneagles commitments to increase aid by

I celebrated Africa Day, May 25, in Rome as a guest of my colleagues in the UN Millennium Campaign in Italy.  They have partnered with key social movements such as trade unions, academics, NGOs, Italy’s largest public media, MTV, and the city of Rome to form a grand coalition with African Diaspora and ItaliAfrica.

For a week in May (13-20 May 2007), I was travelling in Germany like a politician on a whistle stop campaign. My journey began in Nairobi and ended in Bonn with stops in between at Hamburg, Rostock and the beautiful Gothe town of Weimar.

Our friend Kel Currah from GCAP (the world movement to make poverty history) was lucky enough to go to Merkel and Blair’s meeting yesterday, where they accepted our Voices Against Poverty petition. Here’s his firsthand account of what happened…

”Sunday morning and I thought it was time to head south back to Berlin. But it seemed that Tony Blair had planned a surprise visit to see Chancellor Merkel prior to the G8 and they agreed to meet with GCAP in Germany for a symbolic presentation of the Voices Against Poverty petition. This led to a hectic 24 hours for us GCAP campaigners preparing two large ’speech bubbles’ to give to Blair and Merkel when they arrived.

My colleagues at work may be pleased to hear that I have lost my voice!  But it was for a good cause and hopefully it won’t be for very long.

I guess I got a bit carried away on Saturday at the London pre-G8 rally (organized by the major UK churches, NGOs and trade unions) chanting G8, The World Can’t Wait!

So far, it has been looming from a far distance, the big top by the seaside. Like a hard-to-climb peak it overshadows the five dilapidated villas at the beach of Heiligendamm. Their chipped white paint only reminds of the Art Nouveau pearls they used to be. In the oldest beach town of Germany, where once hordes of tourists trailed their feet through the sand, there are now only screeching seagulls. The village has been closed off hermetically with a 12-kilometer-long barbed-wire fence. Marine cruisers are patrolling the seaside. Heiligendamm is a ghost town.