Blair's departure: Blair's approach to Africa was simplistic and lacked an understanding of how the continent works

By Richard Dowden

Friday, 11 May 2007

Share
Close
- Digg
- del.icio.us
- Facebook
- Reddit
- Google
- Stumble Upon
- Fark
- Newsvine
Print
Email

Most people who have a “passion for Africa” find it by living there, working with Africans, learning to dance and laugh and travel through its vast landscapes. It’s an addiction, inexplicable to those who have never been there, ineradicable for those that have. The French call it “fou d’Afrique”.

Although his father worked at Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone, Tony Blair had never been there. His passion seemed to spring ready formed and full of certainties about Africa. That enabled him to talk confidently about putting Africa at the top of the international agenda. He has probably done more than any other politician to raise Africa’s profile in global institutions. Blair made Africa a serious topic of political debate.

But his first encounters with the continent as Prime Minister were marked by a clear absence of expertise in Africa or any understanding of what makes it tick. In Sierra Leone a British company, helped by the British High Commission, supplied arms to the government which had been overthrown by some ghastly rebels, but in defiance of a British drafted United Nations arms ban. Although Blair dismissed the Sandline affair, breezily saying: “the good guys won”, it was a perfect example of good intentions but lack of work on the real issues. The easy but almost accidental military intervention there in 2000, provided a genuine British success in Africa.

Nor did he do his homework in the second Africa crisis. Failing to grasp the delicate relationship between Britain and Zimbabwe, Blair alienated Robert Mugabe by rudely rejecting any responsibility for land reform. The breach would probably have happened anyway but other African leaders promptly sided with Mugabe and the row culminated in a melt down row with Thabo Mbeki at the 2003 Commonwealth Summit in Abuja.

Policy seemed based on an aid agency vision of Africa: give Africa lots of aid and all will be well. Understanding and analysing the politics and culture of Africa did not matter. When Blair made his Home Affairs Adviser his Africa Adviser, handed over Africa policy to Dfid and cut diplomatic posts on the continent it became clear that he did not think it was necessary to understand Africa in order to change it.

He called Africa a “scar on the conscience of the world” – a phrase that worried Africans, echoing as it did the 19th Century missionary zeal to bring Christianity, Commerce and Civilisation to “the dark continent”. But by aligning himself to the aid agencies and Bob Geldof he struck a chord in Britain. The Jubilee Debt Campaign and Make Poverty History built huge support for what was already government policy. That led up to 2005 – the Year of Africa when Britain chaired both the G8 and the held the presidency of the EU and bravely put Africa at the top of their agendas.

Blair’s fellow G8 and European leaders were more cautious however and Britain did not handle the preparations well. Canada, Britain’s natural ally on this issue, was alienated when no Canadian was appointed to the hurriedly created Commission for Africa. Its record of support for Africa at the Kananaskis summit was ignored. George Bush – Blair’s closest political ally – was extremely sceptical about the project and the Americans signed up to none of the main proposals. Nor were Germans or Japanese on the Commission. A Chinese was appointed but the Commission report made only a glancing reference to China, although it was becoming one of the biggest players in Africa.

The Africans who agreed to serve on the Commission were not in the mainstream of change on the continent. Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia was appointed despite a worrying human rights record which has since become dire. Again it was a case of great intentions but a failure to do the spadework carefully and in good time. Despite that the Commission report was good, drilling down into areas that had not been researched before. It warned clearly that the whole enterprise depended on African governments buying into it. Yet its conclusions - written beforehand – were simplistic: aid must be doubled, debt forgiven and trade barriers removed.

Although Blair strong-armed the G8 leaders to sign up to this agenda – a tactic that had never been used at a G8 meeting before - we will learn at this year’s G8 that aid is not being doubled. Debt was forgiven but the money counted as aid. On trade – the big one - there was no progress at all. The G8’s commitment to Africa is flagging. Nor have many African leaders bought significantly into the good governance deal that lies at the heart of change in Africa. Much is changing there but it is hard to argue in the wake of elections in Ethiopia, Senegal, Uganda and Nigeria, that democratic space on the continent is expanding. Sadly Blair’s good intentions may become yet another project abandoned under the fierce African sun.