With great power comes great responsibility. This may be the comic book pop wisdom of Peter Parker, the geeky alter ego of Stan Lee's Spider-Man, yet as many of the world's most powerful figures, and biggest egos, make their way to Davos this week for the annual talk-fest of the World Economic Forum, it may still be a maxim that they should remember.

Three years ago in Davos, and then six months later at the Gleneagles summit, Tony Blair and the other leaders of the West's richest nations trumpeted their earnest commitments to Africa, and to alleviating the plight of a billion of the poorest people around the globe.

Egged on by the even bigger egos of a clutch of campaigning rock legends and Hollywood superstars, from Bono to Angelina Jolie, with whom they were happy to share the limelight and a little reflected glitz, the heads of the Group of Seven leading economies paraded their moral consciences. They promised Africa action, and aid.

Mr Blair spoke passionately then of his commitment to heal what he had previously described memorably as Africa's “scar on the world's conscience”. There has been a lot more such talk from all of the G7 since.

Talk, though, is cheap. Three years on from those heady theatrical moments of grand idealism and political opportunism in Davos and Gleneagles, progress has been pretty scant, and the G7 has failed to fulfil its bold commitments even more dramatically than it made them.

Yet as the world's great and good from politics and business gather again in the Alps for this year's forum, the African cause that they so recently proclaimed as a desperate world emergency is far from at the forefront of their concerns.

Instead, many of those flocking to Switzerland are fretting over worries closer to home. With world financial turmoil, a looming threat of US recession, and a potentially severe global downturn darkening the skies over Davos, the preoccupation of many participants will be less with the plight of those living on less than a dollar a day, and more with worsening prospects for the rather more comfortable living standards in the West.

None of this is a criticism of the World Economic Forum itself, and its organisers, who have kept Africa's continuing tribulations on the Davos agenda. That is perhaps just as well, since some of the national leaders and ministers from the West who will be here in such force could do with a sharp reminder of their promises, and how badly they have been broken.

For all the G7's emotive declarations that Africa had at last been put on its agenda, the reality is that it has failed to put its hand in its collective pocket, or its money where its leaders' mouths were. At Gleneagles, the G7 (along with Russia meeting as the G8) committed themselves to double the rich West's assistance to Africa, and to add $50 billion (£25 billion) a year to global aid budgets by the end of this decade, lifting these to $130 billion. Yet official data showed these promises at their true worth: zero.

A tally last year revealed that although Britain delivered on its pledge to give more, other G7 nations did not. Overall aid to Africa in 2006 was unchanged in cash terms, and actually fell in real terms after adjusting for inflation.

Progress in Africa on achieving the equally vaunted Millennium Development Goals agreed at the United Nations is patchy at best, meanwhile. On the first chief goal, a halving of global numbers living in extreme poverty on less than $1 a day by 2015, Africa is running hard just to stand still.

True, the proportion of African people in extreme poverty fell by 4.7 per cent to 41 per cent over the five years to 2004. Yet rapid population growth means that the absolute number living in this dire state stayed unchanged, at 300 million.

The irony of Western governments' failure to deliver on their sombre promises is all the greater at a time when international investors are intently focused on the idea of Africa as “the next big thing” - if only because of the boost to growth from China's vast appetite for the continent's resources. Investment funds targeted on Africa raised more than $5 billion in the past year.

Yet with the glare of publicity directed by rock star and Hollywood campaigners a little less intense, now may be an opportune moment for the G7's leaders to reflect on whether their present policies on Africa take the right approach in any case. If some aid is certainly necessary, the accumulated evidence suggests that it is almost never sufficient and frequently counter-productive. Too often, billions in Western assistance have flowed not to those in poverty and distress but straight into the pockets of corrupt regimes with little interest in their countries' poor, serving only to preserve these vicious kleptocracies in power to do more damage.

The arguments over the effectiveness of aid as a weapon against Africa's ills are nothing like as black and white as zealots on the left and right make out, but it seems clear that aid alone is not Africa's answer.

That case was compellingly made by Paul Collier, director of Oxford's Centre for the Study of African Economies, in his much-applauded book The Bottom Billion last year. In it, the professor, who has spent 30 years studying Africa, made a powerful case that only with improved government, property rights and the rule of law to nurture economic growth, unimpeded trade access to the West and, where necessary, military intervention to curb chronic conflict, can Africa shake loose from the bonds of poverty.

Such solutions are much more complex and far more difficult than easy promises to throw money at the problems of Africa. But Davos ought to provide an opportunity for the West to face up to its failures on the continent, and debate a more effective approach to fostering its future.

gary.duncan@thetimes.co.uk

Times Recommends

• Lies and cover-up at MG Rover exposed by report
• High oil prices push manufacturing costs up
• Primark founder steps down as chief executive