'What is this place called Africa'?

Top executives from some to the leading companies in Africa today were holding their own business summit ahead of the G8 meeting in Scotland.

In a nice touch, before the speeches got under way, we heard Loide Jorge, a woman from Mozambique, sing a slow jazz number. If they had dimmed the lights, we would have thought ourselves in some New York cabaret instead a business conference in London.

It was an impressive gathering, bringing together some top business leaders as well as senior officials, including the show-stopping South African finance minister, Trevor Manuel.

Among the who's who of business dignitaries were Sir Mark Moody Stuart, chairman of the mining giant, Anglo-American, Jeroen van der Veer, chairman of Royal Dutch Shell and Titus Naikuni, chief executive of Kenya Airways.

They gathered in the City to come up with a business action plan to pass on to Tony Blair, who welcomed the delegates through a video message as he was on Olympics duty in Hong Kong, for the G8 summit.

In his opening speech, Sir Mark said: "We invite our peers in business - who share our sense of commitment and optimism about Africa's future - to join us."

But I did not hear much optimism from one of the delegates. This west African worked as an executive at a leading multinational and his boss was one of the featured speakers, but they did not sing from the same hymn sheet at all.

"I've heard and seen this kind of thing so many times before, the Brandt report (a precursor to the Africa commission) from Chirac, Mitterrand, Boutros-Ghali (the former UN secretary-general), the World Bank, the IMF. It's good to have Africa's profile raised like this, but if you ask me whether anything concrete will happen, I doubt it."

But what about the UK's push on aid and debt relief and aid, I asked. Won't debt relief allow African countries to spend money on schools and hospitals instead of servicing their debt?

"Then why is Tony Blair closing down embassies in Lesotho, Swaziland and Madagascar? They are very upset," he said, referring to last year's decision by the Foreign Office to shut down nine embassies.

He said African countries really had to follow through on their pledges to build up education and somehow to foster a really "robust civil society".

As I mused on the gap between what I heard from the podium and onstage, a fellow journalist and old Africa hand said only half in jest: "I'm sick of hearing about this place called Africa. What is this place Africa? It doesn't exist."