Poverty in Africa and Tony Blair as the Angel of Light

Africans should not blame Mr. Tony Blair, the newly re-elected Prime Minister of Britain, for attempting to redress through the Commission for Africa report, decades of imbalances and injustices visited on Africans by both African rulers and their western collaborators. It is this callous and wicked conspiracy that has brought the beautiful and virgin continent on its knees, largely impoverishing its people and turned them into beggars, cry babies and laughing stocks of the global community.

Sickening image of a child searching for food in the anus of a cow. (Photo source: Consumption Junction) As an African living in the United Kingdom, I have lost count of the number of times, my tummy has ached, and my senses insulted by the shocking images of dying children, dilapidated infrastructures, population mass and war-torn and savaged villages in rural Africa, largely peddled in the western media, on each of these occasions, my only thoughts have been that God did not destine poverty, wars and suffering for Africans, else Africa would not have been richly blessed with abundant natural and human resources, Africans by default, willingly and unwillingly are Africa’s worst enemies.

It is our collective failure as a people, and the failure of successive African governments to get their acts together, that has led Tony Blair and the other world leaders, to try from the West to solve the largely evident problems in Africa. On this note, praise should go to Mr Blair and his Commission for Africa team for the vision, and also for showing a willingness to back this vision with a political will.

The good thing about the report is that it talks about a partnership between Africa and the West, this new approach to dealing with Africa is most welcome, it not only shows that Africa as a continent has grown up, it also challenges Africa to rise up and accept its responsibilities as a grown up, the report entrusts Africa’s destiny into Africa’s hands.

Further evidence of this is seen in the large representation of Africans in the 17 man commission, such as Nigeria’s Fola Adeola (founder of Guaranty Trust Bank PLC & Chairman of Fate Foundation), Meles Zenawi (Ethiopian Prime Minister) Ghana’s Dr. K.Y Amoako (Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission of Africa), Uganda’s Dr. William S. Kalema, South Africa’s Trevor Manuel, and Mrs. Linah Mohohlo (Governor of the Bank of Botswana) to name a few of them. The members of the Commission reportedly consulted widely through out Africa and with the African Diaspora before making its recommendations.

The proposals, as enounced in the report are worthy, for example the call for western leaders to increase aid, cancel debts completely and repatriate funds stolen by corrupt leaders which are currently stashed away in numbered Western bank accounts. The report also calls on African leaders to improve governance and fight corruption, provide free primary education, improve health care, commit aid money to infrastructural development and so on.

However, in order not to let these proposals become another one of those endless communiquès normally issued at the end of every conference or seminar on Africa’s problems, it is vital that both the Prime Minister and the Commission for Africa go a step further.

Especially now that the Prime Minister has been re-elected in the May 5th 2005 elections for a record third time, he should let his actions speak louder than the words contained in the 461-page report. The common man on the streets of Africa desirous of real change would like to see Mr Blair convince his fellow Western leaders of the seriousness of the African situation, he can only do this if he sets the ball rolling by acting decisively the same way he did when he led the way in the aftermath of the Tsunami disaster, through his governments’ record -£75M contribution. This time, Africans expect a British government announcement of debt cancellations for poor African nations; such announcements may be the tonic the other creditor nations need to begin to take action themselves towards that direction.

It has been widely reported and acknowledged that for Africa to make the fresh start desired by all, the continent needs to offload its huge and mounting debt burden, which it can no longer sustain, some of these debts were incurred by corrupt regimes who ended up recycling the funds back into their private bank accounts scattered all over the western countries, while some of these corrupt officials have since left government, the citizens of these African countries continue to suffer from the repayments, without any real and tangible differences in the social systems and infrastructures, the reasons advanced by the corrupt government officials in order to secure the loans in the first place.

Water is still a scarce resource in major parts of Africa as this picture shows a child washing himself with animal urine

Nigeria for instance, despite the reported oil windfall from the Iraq war, has not been able to effect any real changes in the lives of its citizens, this is largely due to its huge debt burden which currently stands at $33bn, in the last two years alone Nigeria has paid over -£3.5B in debt servicing, while its debt stock over the same period has risen by -£3.9B without any new borrowing, largely due to mounting interest rates on the debts.

Interestingly, Britain is Nigeria’s largest creditor with 21% of Nigeria’s debts. So, Mr Blair should realise that the buck actually stops with him and his government, if they act by canceling the debts, the other creditors may follow suit. Any thing short of this may be likened to paying lip service to Africa’s problems or just plain and cheap political talk, which in this instance should not be the case as the Prime Minister’s Labour Party has been recently returned to power, and so there is not any immediate political risks to the Prime Minister and his party for pursuing such a radical but progressive and humanitarian course of action.

Savings made through non-payments of the debts, as a result of cancellations can now be invested massively in the development of infrastructures, which are needed in order to build and increase capacity, broaden opportunities for Africans locally, and stimulate real socio-economic growth in Africa.

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