Britain pledged cash for a low-tech solution to fighting resurgent malaria in Africa on Thursday and said its drive to help the continent this year must secure real change to be judged a success.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced 45 million pounds ($85 million) toward the $550 million he said the World Health Organisation had estimated was needed to buy bed nets to prevent malaria in Africa.

He asked other G8 countries to pay the rest needed to combat a disease that kills between 1 and 3 million people a year, most of them African children under five.

Blair said the money was part of Britain’s commitment to tackle Africa’s problems this year in its presidency of the Group of Eight leading industrialised nations.

Past drives to tackle endemic poverty, persistent disease and conflict in Africa have foundered on the massive practical challenges and crumbling political will.

Blair acknowledged success was not guaranteed. He hopes the Africa Commission he founded, half of whose members are from Africa, will present a report to G8 leaders mid-year on trade support, debt relief, aid and other measures they can back.

“We’ve set the benchmarks. It’s about the Africa Commission and any acceptance of it and a mechanism that can take it forward,” Blair told the World Economic Forum, a gathering of business and political leaders in this Swiss ski resort.

Success would be “a real sense on the continent of Africa that there has been a fundamental shift and these issues are going to be taken forward with urgency and determination.”

DEBT RELIEF KEY

Britain has proposed doubling annual aid to poor countries to $100 billion, dismantling trade barriers, an infrastructure fund and writing off multilateral debt to the world’s 70 poorest countries at a cost over $2 billion over 10 years.

“Debt cancellation must be effected,” said South African President Thabo Mbeki. “It’s really obscene that poor countries become net exporters of capital due to debt.”

Irish rock star Bono, appearing alongside Blair, said agreement on cancelling debt was the minimum that should be achieved this year.

Earlier rounds of debt reduction allowed Uganda to treble the number of primary school places it could afford, he said.

Mbeki, appearing with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, said the region’s leaders needed to work harder to end the military conflicts scarring the continent.

“Unless we have peace and security we don’t have the ability to do anything else,” said Obasanjo.

Anti-mosquito nets are judged to be the most cost-effective mechanism in poor communities for preventing insects infecting people, who have become more vulnerable as the disease’s resistance to traditional treatments grows.

“Malaria is solvable,” said Microsoft Corp founder Bill Gates, whose charitable foundation this week gave $750 million to fund research into new medicines and vaccines for preventable diseases, including malaria.

“Bed nets are a very cheap way to save lives while the other things come along,” Gates told the World Economic Forum.

Recent trials on a malaria vaccine have been promising but it does not yet work for all children and further testing means it will not reach the market before 2005.