UPSTARTS 2005
THE WINNERS
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This time, get Africa's priorities right
As you read this, Tony Blair's 17-member Commission for Africa, originally proposed by Bob Geldof, will be publishing its report. For a few days, we shall hear fine words, see heart- rending pictures and marvel at Mr Geldof's passion. But we have been here before. Remember Live Aid? Remember the UN's Millennium Development Goals? Remember Mr Blair's speech about the "scar on the conscience of the world"? After all that, each sub-Saharan African gets just $30 a year in aid from the rest of the world (and only $12 if you strip out western consultancy fees, debt servicing and one-off emergency donations). Is there any reason to believe that this time it will be different? The modern western mind has a short attention span; it prefers the immediate and the contingent to the long-term and the remote. Even the green movement, which can frighten us with warnings of tempests, heatwaves and droughts, blows in and out of fashion. If disease, conflict and poverty continue to plague Africa, that
will have no obvious effect on most European or American lives, despite vague fears about terrorist breeding grounds.
It is all very well for our politicians to visit Africa, have themselves photographed with orphaned children, and declare themselves appalled. But the Africa Commission's recommendations require them to stand firm against powerful commercial interests and producer lobbies. Take the issue of corruption, which everyone agrees bears some of the responsibility for Africa's plight. The point, as Michela Wrong explains (page 22), is that Africa's elite take the money out of the continent and salt it away in London and Zurich bank accounts. This explains why highly corrupt societies in Asia, such as Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan (where regimes keep the money they arrogate "in-house"), can achieve high economic growth while their equivalents in Africa cannot. The Africa Commission demands that the developed countries repatriate such funds. But London's banks hold some $6bn from Nigeria and Kenya alone. Will the government make them cough up? It hasn't so far, despite requests from new
and apparently less corrupt rulers.
The commission also calls for western companies "to be more transparent in their activities in developing countries". They could start with more transparency at home, but that will come from regulation, not exhortation. And the commission wants negotiations to begin on controlling the arms trade. Will Britain, one of the biggest exporters of arms, be cheering for that? As Mark Thomas reports (page 35), the Department of Trade and Industry appears to be easing controls not only on arms exports themselves but also on the bribery they nearly always involve. And inevitably the commission wants tariffs against African goods, particularly cotton and sugar, lowered and subsidies to western farmers and industries stopped. If Africa could take 1 per cent more in world trade (taking its share of global trade to a still paltry 3 per cent), it would earn roughly $70bn more annually: that's three times what it now receives in aid. Yet the most dedicated free marketeers in the west find it hard to
face down "feather-bedded" domestic producers when jobs and profits are threatened.
Even the commission's proposal to spend $500m a year for ten years on African universities, and another $3bn on centres of technological excellence, could prove more contentious than it looks. Are western electorates really going to be overjoyed when another continent offers a whole new set of opportunities for high-tech outsourcing?
In other words, the best intentions will not be enough if western politicians won't make enemies on Africa's behalf, and persuade their electorates to make sacrifices. Africa is already doing better, partly because of the development of communications technology. Growth in mobile phones is running at 65 per cent a year and is enabling millions to play an active role in a market economy, giving them accurate, speedy information on the prices of goods and the availability of buyers. Along with deregulated radio, telephony also makes democratic debate easier and rigging elections harder. So the potential is there and the old excuse, that aid would be wasted, no longer washes. But aid will flow, we are told, only if Africa adopts "good governance". Fair enough, if good governance means spending on health, education and water services; for the US and IMF it tends to mean creating a more friendly environment for multinationals, with money going to big building projects and fees being
charged for schools and doctors. Africa got its economic priorities wrong in the past, but so did western donors. If Mr Blair's commission can change that, it will have been worthwhile.
The constitution: a brief guide
There is no bar to the Prince of Wales marrying Camilla Parker Bowles, writes our man who once had dinner with the Queen's second cousin thrice removed and therefore qualifies as a constitutional expert. Though members of the royal family are in every respect special, being the only people who hold state office by hereditary right and being exempt from taxes the rest of you pay, they have their human rights like anyone else. These include the human right to marry divorced people whensoever and wheresoever they like, even though they may act as the head of a church which has always told you that divorce is wrong and marriage is a sacrament. If we ruling classes hadn't thought of this one, we'd have thought of something else under some law we got through while you weren't looking. What you poor saps have never understood is the function of a ruling class: it is to make up rules to suit ourselves as we go along.
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