G8 summits focuses on Africa on final day

L'AQUILA, Italy (CNN) - Meetings with African leaders mark the final day of the G8 summit Friday in Italy, at which the world's top industrialized nations have focused largely on the global financial crisis and climate change.

U.S. President Barack Obama huddles with South African President Jacob Zuma on Friday before holding a summit-closing news conference. Obama will then make a quick trip to Rome and the Vatican, where the first family is to have an audience with Pope Benedict XVI.

The G8 countries - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States - have been meeting in L'Aquila, an earthquake-ravaged town outside Rome.

On the last night of the summit, the G8 countries agreed to a goal on global warming and ordered their finance ministers to seek to relaunch stalled global trade talks.

Climate change was the main issue on Thursday, with the G8 nations agreeing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The goal - cutting emissions by 80 percent by the year 2050 - is aimed at preventing Earth's atmosphere from warming by more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

At a separate meeting Thursday, emerging economies also agreed to work toward the 2 degree Celsius threshold. But the countries - including China and India, two of the biggest polluters - refused to set a target.

Most mainstream climate change scientists warn that warming above 2 degree Celsius could mean catastrophe for Earth.

U.N.-led negotiations are aimed at reaching a climate change treaty - involving 192 nations - in December in Copenhagen, Denmark. Such a treaty would succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.

Obama's meeting with the pope on Friday comes three days after the pontiff launched a verbal assault on global capitalism ahead of the G8 meeting, lambasting "grave deviations and failures" and calling for a "profoundly new way of understanding business enterprise."

The pope challenged bankers to turn away from the practices blamed for bringing about the global economic crisis and instead use their power to help the world create wealth and economic development.

After meeting the pope, the first U.S. African-American president will make his first trip as chief executive to Africa, traveling to Accra, Ghana. Obama's father was a native of Kenya.

Obama is to meet with the president of Ghana and address parliament on Saturday.