Former South African president Nelson Mandela has accepted an invitation to address members of the industrial G7 who will be meeting in London next month. Mandela will urge the world's richest nations to direct more of an effort to help Africa.

The 86-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner will show his support for the proposed new "Marshall plan" which will tackle poverty, debt and disease in Africa.

The Marshall Plan is described as a three-point project that would free financially poor states from their burden of historic debts, liberalise trade and massively increase international aid for the continent. Mandela will use his visit to London to assure world leaders that the plan is a positive step toward reducing poverty and infant/maternal mortality rates as well as tackling HIV/AIDS which is at epidemic proportions in Africa.

Mandela, whose 54-year-old son was buried on Saturday after losing his battle with AIDS has said that the stigma of HIV/AIDS must be removed and the disease should be treated like any other illness. "The only way of doing so is to treat Aids as an ordinary disease like Tuberculosis," he stated.