As part of the ongoing and necessary effort to create a UN that is truly representative of all its members, this title attempts to present the African perspective far more clearly and persuasively than has previously been the case. The argument in the title can be summed up in this excerpt: "Africa and the West have engaged in a "dialogue of the deaf " at the UN and other international forums since the continent's "lost decade" of the 1980s. The dialogue runs as follows: Africans call for an annulment of what they see as an unpayable external debt of $290 billion and note that they have paid back $550 billion out of an initial debt of $540 billion between 1970 and 2002; the West continues to roll over the debt and offers periodic "debt relief" for an ailing African patient.