ABSTRACT
The G7/8 Summit, held at Kananaskis, Alberta, on 2627 June 2002, marked the culmination of the fourth seven-year cycle of G7/8 summitry and the 28th annual regular summit encounter since the start at Rambouillet in 1975. Kananaskis could well prove to be a summit of singular historic significance, should its far-reaching but consciously conditional commitments be complied with by its members and by its new African partners as well. The success of Kananaskis flowed in part from its fidelity to the work programme that G8 leaders had adopted at their protest-plagued Genoa Summit in 2001. The first factor propelling the leaders toward success at Kananaskis was the combined continuity and credibility they brought from Genoa the previous year. Kananaskis's centrepiece of poverty reduction in Africa put democratisation at its heart. African countries themselves, in their own voluntary peer review process where the principles of good governance and the rule of law held first place.
