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We need good governors, not aid
David Blair, Telegraph News
March 11, 2005

http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Africa is short of everything except good intentions, platitudes and promises of money from Western taxpayers. Yet it will be showered with all three today when Tony Blair's Commission for Africa unveils its report on the world's poorest continent.

Thanks to advance leaks of the contents of this 400-page tome, we know exactly what the 17 international luminaries, ranging from the Prime Minister to Bob Geldof, who sit on this august body think is needed for a "strong and prosperous Africa".

Many of their ideas are sensible and necessary. And yet the report has one glaring flaw: it is passionate and detailed on what the West should do for Africa, but silent or vacuous on what Africa should do for itself.

Its main remedy for the continent's ills is thus a depressing throwback to the 1960s school of aid and development - that Africa should get an extra £13 billion of aid by 2010 and another £13 billion after that.

Bitter experience suggests that even if these huge sums were multiplied tenfold, they would do little good. For Africa received £220 billion of aid between 1960 and 1997, the equivalent of six Marshall Plans, and finished up even poorer than before.

With the possible exception of President Robert Mugabe, everyone now accepts that Africa's central problem is not a shortage of aid but "bad governance". Put simply, the continent is filled with repressive and incompetent regimes whose chief pastime is grand larceny.

The onus to revive their own continent must be on Africans themselves. Indeed the report pays lip service to this notion, declaring: "Africa must take the lead in this partnership, take on responsibility for its problems and take ownership of the solutions."

Hilary Benn, the international development secretary and a commission member, has even claimed that the report was not just about "what we need to do" but also "the things Africa needs to do to help itself".

In fact, more than two thirds of the report's recommendations are directed at the rich world. "Governance" is rightly identified as Africa's "core problem". But, astonishingly, the report proceeds to give eight recommendations to the West on how to fix African governments and only one to those administrations themselves.

This lonely prescription calls for Africa to "draw-up comprehensive capacity-building strategies" - whatever that may mean. Even more remarkable is the failure of the recommendations on "governance" to include the word "democracy".

Decades of bitter experience have shown that authoritarianism is the enemy of development. But a British-sponsored commission has dodged an unambiguous demand for every African regime to embrace democracy. It is little short of incredible that this vital issue can still be skirted.

Still more depressing is the report's coverage of corruption. This, we are told, is a "systemic challenge facing African leaders". In a continent where Gen Sani Abacha, the late Nigerian dictator, was able to steal between £1 billion and £3 billion in less five years, this is no exaggeration.

Yet, by some warped logic, all three of the report's recommendations for fighting corruption in Africa are directed not at Africans but at Western nations.

They are urged to take "all necessary" measures to "repatriate illicitly acquired funds and assets held in the financial systems of their countries". What about insisting that African governments stop those "illicitly acquired funds" from being looted in the first place?

Mr Blair's passion for Africa is undoubtedly genuine. But his liking for grandiose schemes does the continent no service. A commission that would genuinely help Africa would focus on three simple themes.

First, the West must stop acting in ways that damage Africa. This is the one area where the report's ideas are spot-on. Debts that can never be repaid and barriers to trade in agriculture impose crippling burdens on Africa.

It bears repeating that trade barriers cost poor countries £55 billion every year, about twice what they receive in aid. Lifting them should be the highest priority.

Second, African regime should never again be allowed to excuse their monumental failings behind rhetoric about the evils of colonialism. If they fall short of the standards that western citizens demand of their own governments, they must be condemned and isolated.

Both African leaders chosen by Mr Blair to serve on his Commission are unfit to represent their continent. Meles Zenawi, the Ethiopian prime minister, fought a pointless border war with neighbouring Eritrea that claimed 70,000 lives, cost billions and set back the development of the Horn of Africa by years, if not decades.

President Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania is an outspoken fan of Mr Mugabe and entertains the curious belief that this dictator is a "champion of democracy". In fact, if he is a "champion" of anything, it is misery, as illustrated by yesterday's figures showing that life expectancy in Zimbabwe has fallen to just 33, compared with 63 in 1988.

There are African leaders who preside over democratic, relatively clean governments - President John Kufuor of Ghana or President Festus Mogae of Botswana come to mind. It is scandalous that only Mr Zenawi and Mr Mkapa found themselves on the Commission.

Thirdly, but most of all, the West must only offer more aid if African governments reform and improve. Aid must be an incentive for better behaviour, not an unconditional handout.

A pledge that apparently binds the West to give Africa £26 billion over the next 10 years, based on a report that cannot even bring itself to recommend democracy for the continent, does no one any good.

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