It is hard to be positive about the G8 summit in Evian.

The French hosts had promised the summit would concentrate on tackling poverty. Britain had also pledged to make Africa its priority.

The US announced plans to spend $15bn in the fight against Aids

African countries were looking for progress on greater development assistance, on trade reform and on debt reduction.

All three are needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals of halving the number of people living on less than a dollar a day in Africa by 2015.

But African countries cannot feel any closer to meeting those goals now than they were before the summit began.

The highlight of the G8 must be US plans to provide $15bn, of which $10bn is new, for the battle against HIV/Aids. The Global Health Fund will receive $1bn of the US money.

The response to this positive display of one-upmanship was immediate. President Jacques Chirac then announced a tripling of French contributions to the Global Health Fund and said the EU would match the American offer.

Any overview of the immense challenges facing Africa must put the HIV/Aids pandemic high on its list of priorities for action.

Almost 30 million people live with HIV and 2.5 million die from Aids each year on the continent.

'Too little, too late'

But unfortunately the significant advance on HIV/Aids at the G8 was not matched by new agreements on trade, debt and aid.

Chirac: "Political pirouette"

Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa were invited to the enlarged G8 to discuss the African continent's problems. Top of their agenda was a fundamental review of debt sustainability.

Poor countries are still spending millions of dollars repaying debt, money that could otherwise go towards health and education. But the G8 only rehashed past commitments on debt.

As the African leaders left Evian, their disappointment on debt relief was visible. "Too little, too late," said President Obasanjo of Nigeria.

G8 leaders failed to come up with any breakthrough on cutting harmful agricultural subsidies.

President Chirac looks to have done a political pirouette by admitting for the first time export subsidies undermine African farmers.

France has pledged to stop the subsidies on agriculture that are harming the world's poorest countries. This is a conceptual breakthrough considering that France has been the most ardent defender of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy.

African leaders were invited to the G8 to discuss their countries' problems

But there has been no sign that US President George W Bush is prepared to match France's proposal. Dialogue on trade remains frozen ahead of the crucial World Trade Organisation meeting this September in Cancun, Mexico.

African countries need more aid.

The 2002 G8 in Kananaskis promised: "No country genuinely committed to poverty reduction, good governance and economic reform will be denied the chance to achieve the Millennium Development Goals through lack of finance."

Yet Ethiopia, Niger, and Rwanda have been thwarted in their plans because their only source of finance is further borrowing, which would take them over their debt sustainability threshold.

Leaders of the world's rich simply shrugged their shoulders to say they are doing all they can to help the world's poorest people Patrick Nicholson

All analyses show that most African countries will miss out on the Millennium Development Goals through lack of finance.

I was genuinely optimistic that Evian would come up with concrete proposals to match their past promises. That is why I came.

But Evian spelt backwards is naive after all, and perhaps I was naive in thinking the G8 could deliver.

Leaders of the world's rich simply shrugged their shoulders to say they are doing all they can to help the world's poorest people.