African leaders, who met Brown in London earlier this month, agreed to support an initiative proposed by Zoellick, which demands that 0.7 percent of all bailout plans by developed countries be channeled to Africa.

The developed countries are also facing increasing pressure to strengthen the representation of emerging and developing economies in a fairer international economic order.

The unfair global financial and trading system which the developed countries have dominated and benefited from during the past decades, as many economists point out, is the root of poverty of many developing countries and the cause of the global financial crisis.

Without the establishment of a new global economic order in which the developing countries have a louder voice and more opportunities, the world may find it difficult to avoid another crisis of such magnitude in the future.

(Xinhua News Agency March 28, 2009)