Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
MR MYLES
WICKSTEAD
12 OCTOBER 2004
Q1 Chairman: Myles, thank you very much
for giving time to the Committee. I think we were all pleased
to see and hear the Prime Minister's speech in Addis, which was
a strong reaffirmation of the Government's position and his personal
position on Africa. What would be helpful to the Committee—and
a slightly boring machinery of government question first—is
if you could give us a feel as to how you see the Commission's
work moving forward? There is a slight sense that the Prime Minister
and Parliament have this idea of the Commission, a number of great
and good Commissioners are appointed and there is a first meeting
in London, they are sent away to think about topics, a think-piece,
but, in that wonderful Civil Service phrase, "working up
ideas" in the hope that everyone can work up some good ideas
before 2005. It would be helpful to the Committee if we could
have an understanding from you as to how you see that work moving
forward in 2005. Is there going to be an end-date for the Commission's
work? Will it end at the end of 2005? How is it hoped that the
work or the recommendations, if there are any, of the Commission
will be taken forward? Or is the purpose of the Commission that
this is something that effectively finishes work by the end of
this year so that it can influence the operation of the G8 during
Britain's Presidency? It would be quite helpful to have some idea
of the mechanics of all of this.
Mr Wickstead: Thank you very much,
Chairman, and thank you for inviting me to give evidence to you.
I am delighted, because we have had so much support from this
Committee and the individual members and the All-Party Africa
Group, and others, and I feel very much at home in this sort of
company because we have had the most wonderful support from all
of you across the parties, and we very much appreciate that sense
of you being behind us. Let me tell you a little about the Commission's
calendar. As you know, the Commission was launched at the end
of February, we had the first meeting in May, and we have all
just come back from Addis Ababa, where we had the second meeting
of the Commission. It was the first time really that the Commission
had met together as a whole team since the creation of the Commission
and people had had an opportunity to think a little about ideas,
to talk amongst themselves in smaller groups about issues like
peace and security, like governance, et cetera. My sense
from the meetings that we had on Thursday of last week was that
the Commission really does now exist as a coherent body. I thought
the atmospherics of the meeting were absolutely excellent, and
I think the sort of discussion that we had there—and I have
had many development discussions in many different fora in my
time—was really as good as I have ever witnessed. A really
lively discussion, lots of good ideas and a real sense that this
Commission was gelling, that whether the Commissioners were from
the UK, from Africa, from China or wherever, everyone was determined
to make a success of this. The plan from hereon in is broadly
this, that as a result of the discussions that we had at the end
of last week we will agree with the Commission a short paper that
will act as the basis for consultation over the next two to three
months.[1]
That consultation paper will be used as the basis for discussion
with our African consultations; we are planning flagship consultations
in each of the Africa regions, with governments and civil society,
so one in each of the five regions of Africa; a number of subsidiary
consultations on various rather more specific issues like, for
example, the role of the private sector in development; and of
course we will be continuing with our contacts and consultations
within this country, within the G8 and within the European Union.
At the same time as we carry forward with those consultations
for the rest of this year, we will be reflecting the outcomes
of those consultations into the draft report, and that draft report
will be largely constructed over the next three months. Our intention
will then be to put the draft report to the Commissioners in January,
to have a series of iterations, with a view, we hope, to having
the final third meeting of the Commission some time in late February
2005 and the publication of the report coming in March 2005. The
reason for that timetable is that once the report has been produced
we move into the next phase which is, assuming that Her Majesty's
Government like what is in the Commission report, selling it,
as it were, to G8 partners in particular, in the lead up to the
G8 summit in early July. The Commission's work will not be quite
completed at that stage. We are considering what sort of role
the Commission might have, for example, in relation to the MDG
summit in New York in 2005, but it has been very clear throughout
that the Commission's role will cease at the end of next year.
That is very important because some of the concerns that people
have expressed have been a little bit of scepticism about whether
a new Commission is really required; is it just going to take
over from existing mechanisms and structures; is it set up as
a rival to NEPAD? By saying that the Commission has a short shelf
life, which is intended to give impetus, political will, as it
were, to existing structures, and that it will end at the end
of 2005, I think has given a degree of reassurance to people.
The report that goes to the G8 will be, we expect, very focused,
very action-orientated, setting out recommendations which must
be implemented quickly if Africa is to have any prospect of achieving
the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. It is clear that some
sort of mechanism will need to be found to track those recommendations
through, to find ways of ensuring that when we cease our Presidency
at the end of 2005 they are not simply dropped and forgotten about.
Discussions are going on now as to what sort of mechanism is required,
how this could be folded into the Africa Partners Forum process
or the G8 or NEPAD or some sort of combination of those, to ensure
that the recommendations are followed through.
Q2 Chairman: Are you and your team at
some stage, during the course of next year, going to become sherpas
for working out these proposals for the other G8 colleagues, or
who is going to take that on—DFID, the Foreign Office?
Mr Wickstead: That would essentially
be a British Government role.
Q3 Chairman: Do you see that as being
DFID? FCO? Who is going to do that?
Mr Wickstead: I think it will
go into the normal sherpa mechanisms; I think that the FCO and
DFID will both have roles to play.
Q4 Hugh Bayley: Where, Myles, in policy
terms do you think progress was made last week in Addis? Where
do you think the biggest problems are of buy-in, of cooperation
with the Commission from African institutions, the African Union
(AU) in particular? And what work is being done to achieve buy-in
commitment to the Commission's agenda prior to the UK Presidency,
from other G8 countries and other EU countries?
Mr Wickstead: Perhaps I could
frame your questions a little by saying that we see very much
that the Commission is, as it were, the mirror image of NEPAD;
that NEPAD is essentially an African initiative with actions primarily
designed for African countries; that the Commission is a support
mechanism for NEPAD, with actions primarily designed to generate
the international will that will allow resources and support to
go into Africa to support Africa's own plan. So to answer your
direct question, it is therefore very important to our work that
we keep in touch with all our European colleagues, with the other
G8 colleagues, to explain to them what it is we are trying to
do; to discuss with them the emerging conclusions, which will
begin to come out over the next two or three months, and we have
already had a number of discussions with other European Member
States, with the European Commission, with most of the G8 now.
As far as the AU and other African organisations are concerned,
of course they will be delighted, I think, with any mechanism
that does not seek to replace existing mechanisms, which recognises
the important work that the African Union and NEPAD are already
doing, and which gives international support to the processes
which they already have in place. To come to your very specific
question about areas of progress, et cetera, there was
a very strong determination at the end of last week's meeting
to work very closely with the African Union in a number of areas,
but including particularly peace and security, where the African
Union has shown itself, I believe, extremely willing to take the
initiative. They have some extremely good people working in that
part, but there is no doubt that there is a lack of capacity and
a lack of resources in order for them to be able to deliver on
parts of the peace and security agenda. So I think by us getting
behind that we can reinforce what Africa is already doing for
itself.
Q5 Hugh Bayley: There seems to be a growing
debate about whether the Commission should be setting a new agenda,
setting new priorities even for a developed country partnership
with Africa's development, or whether we should be simply driving
forward the implementation of existing commitments and policies.
Can you reflect on how much of each you would expect the Commission
to do, and in particular say something about the changing of western
policy where western policy compromises development in Africa,
for instance on the arms trade or on banking secrecy, on those
sorts of issues, on which we could actually make changes ourselves,
which would benefit Africa without necessarily having a buy-in
from Africans?
Mr Wickstead: I think the answer
to your first question is that we will be very much in the business
of driving forward what is already known. I very much doubt if,
at the end of this process, the Commission is going to come up
with half a dozen new ideas, saying, "Why did nobody think
of this before?" I think we know, broadly speaking, what
needs to be done in Africa by Africans and what the international
community needs to do to support what Africa is doing. I think
that our starting point must be to ensure that the international
community delivers on its existing obligations, delivers on all
the things that it has already signed up to. I think the Commission's
report will be much more ambitious than that, but I think that
is a very important, crucial starting point. Yes, I do think there
are many things that the international community can do in that
respect which, basically, carry forward either existing obligations
or the way that the debate is moving. On existing obligations,
things like the arms trade, which you mentioned, or on repatriation
of stolen assets, financial assets, for example, are things where
there is either legislation in place, which has not been enforced
sufficiently vigorously, or perhaps where new legislation is required.
Perhaps the most obvious areas where the West needs to change
existing practice are in the areas of trade and agriculture. Trade,
which really prohibits Africa from developing finished products,
makes it very difficult for them to export into Europe or the
US; and agricultural subsidies, we all have the facts and figures
about those, more or less, at our fingertips.
Q6 Mr Robathan: Mr Wickstead, I think
I applaud the Commission for Africa, and I was struck by what
you said, moving forward an impetus behind good ideas, political
will, driving them forward, and I think that is all to be encouraged.
But I also rather take the view that we should expect people to
put their own houses in order, be it Britain or anywhere else,
before they tell other people how to act. To that extent—and
I know you have just served a couple of years in Ethiopia—when,
for instance, we have the Prime Minister of Ethiopia on the Commission,
and I read on the Foreign Office website, updated a couple of
months ago, "The human rights situation in Ethiopia is poor.
Detention without trial is frequent and often open-ended. Prison
conditions are bad and torture widespread," et cetera,
et cetera, I wonder what the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, who
has been in power now for 15 years, since he was part of the Ethiopian
Revolutionary People's Front—I think he seized power, not
very legitimate—or indeed President Mkapa of Tanzania—I
have just been in Tanzania on holiday, lovely place, GDP less
than a dollar a day because of past government policies, it has
been in power for nine years and, as it says on the website, corruption
is widespread; and I could go on about Côte d'Ivoire or
indeed Nigeria, where we went a couple of years ago. The point
is this, that whilst I applaud the intention, these people are
in positions where they can already do some good in their own
countries. Fifteen years in power is a long time; Hitler managed
to destroy the whole of Europe in 12. These are people that are
in power and can do good, and yet seem not to have achieved a
great deal. So what I would say to you is that whilst I applaud
the intention, where is going to be the beef, because fine words
are all very well but action is what is required for the starving
and poor people of Africa.
Mr Wickstead: I think that in
both countries that you have mentioned, Ethiopia and Tanzania,
there is much to take heart from what has happened over the last
10 or 15 years. As you say, I have been in Addis Ababa myself
for three years prior to taking on this responsibility and at
one stage in the mid-90s I was also responsible for development
programmes in East Africa, which included Tanzania. I think that
the direction of travel in both countries has been very much in
the right direction. Things are not perfect in either, but I think
in Tanzania they have pulled a great many people out of poverty
who were previously in poverty. In Ethiopia I think that democratisation
has really begun to take hold. Having been there and seen, for
example, the Press freedoms which are enjoyed—and I know
that is not complete and that more progress needs to be made—my
strong sense is that things are moving ahead. These leaders, Prime
Minister Meles and President Mkapa, made a huge contribution to
the discussions that we had at the end of last week, and I think
that if you wanted to find an African leader who was committed
to poverty reduction, who knew a huge amount about what needed
to be done in terms of agricultural development and food security,
which were the problems that beset Ethiopia in particular 20 years
ago, you would be hard pushed to find a proponent of what needs
to be done who is more articulate than Prime Minister Meles. I
think it is very constructive. I do not want to stray too far
away from the Commission's work and get on to Ethiopia too much,
but I think the situation last year, when potentially the food
situation was worse than in 1984—in 1984 somewhere between
half a million and a million people died because food was being
used as a weapon of hunger, et cetera—last year very
few people died, even though the situation was potentially worse
because the cooperation between the government and the international
community was extremely strong. So I think that all our Commissioners
have a great deal to offer, and I think President Mkapa and Prime
Minster Meles bring something very special to the table.
Q7 Mr Robathan: I thought your talk about
direction of travel was encouraging although, I have to say, I
remain somewhat sceptical. If I could pick up on one thing you
said, which is that you said we need to discover what needs to
be done in Africa by Africans. It seems to me that one thing that
is probably the overriding issue is the question of what is now
termed good governance, and people know that. I have to say that
they need to not just shout about it but to put it into practice.
You may say that is easier said than done, but actually quite
a lot of things are relatively easily done and they do not seem
to be being done. Incidentally, I note that journalists in the
independent Press in Ethiopia remain at risk of arbitrary arrest
and detention, but that is only what the Foreign Office say.
Mr Wickstead: I agree with you
that governance is crucial and in much of the survey work that
we have done about 80% of people come up, when you ask them what
is the most fundamental question of "What needs to be gripped?",
and governance is what is at the top of the pecking order. The
UN Economic Commission for Africa actually is today publishing
a report on governance in Africa[2]
and the conclusion from that is—and I am sorry to use the
words again—that the direction of travel is a broadly positive
one. I take particular comfort from the creation of the Africa
Peer Review Mechanism, which is part of the NEPAD process, and
under it countries agree to subject themselves to peer review
across the board. This is something that perhaps many western
countries would find some difficulty with, but 23 countries now
have put themselves forward for peer review. The process is still
in its early stages, we do not know exactly how it is going to
work, but I think the very fact that the mechanism has been created
and that a number of countries have volunteered to put themselves
forward is, I think, probably an indication that things are indeed
moving the right way.
Q8 Mr Colman: Like Mr Robathan, I was
disappointed at the list of people who were Commissioners, but
for a different reason. I was very surprised that there was not,
if you like, more prominence given to African businessmen. If
we look at how in China or India, other parts of the world, people
are pulled out of poverty, it has been largely tremendous expansion
in foreign direct investment and in terms of development of the
business community, and Africa is suffering from a strike of investment
because people will not invest there. Your African facts, which
you have issued, clearly show that, with South Korea having a
higher GDP by far than the whole of Africa, yet receiving no overseas
aid at all, but clearly being done by business. I see you have
four meetings in Accra, Yaounde, Dar es Salaam and Algiers coming
up in November. What is the agenda going to be for these meetings?
Is it one you are able to share with us? Do you believe there
is a major move forward? And following up on the last comment
that has been made about good governance, the OECD launches today
a set of rules for good governance[3]
that they are asking member countries to support in terms of good
governance of companies that operate within those countries, membership
of the OECD, both in terms of private sector companies and public
sector parastatals. I would recommend it to the Commission to
have a look at. But is there a similar pressing push, as it were,
from the Commission for Africa to ensure that the African business
community is totally engaged and are being listened to?
Mr Wickstead: I think I can answer
yes to that question. It is perfectly true that there are not
many people on the Commission with direct private sector experience,
though I think there are two crucial ones: one of them, Tidjane
Thiam, who was formerly Minister of Planning in Co®te D'Ivoire,
who is now working in the private sector in Europe, and William
Kalema, who is Chairman of the Uganda Business Group, and who
has been extremely active in promoting the importance of the private
sector for the Commission's work. He and Trevor Manuel, the South
African Finance Minister, and I participated in an African Investment
Forum about a month ago in South Africa, where business interests
from all over the continent came together and the Commission was
given a specific slot to talk about its work and to take evidence
from people about what they saw as being the key constraints,
what needed to happen in Africa, in order to encourage people
to invest, not just foreign direct investment but also investment
within Africa and developing investment between and across regions.
The Commonwealth Business Council and NEPAD jointly are conducting
on our behalf these five regional consultations around the continent,
which are precisely designed to build on what we already did in
Johannesburg, which is to find out what are the concerns that
business people have and to reflect those in our report, so that
there is a very clear indication as to what the enabling environment
needs to be for the private sector to operate, because I think
we are all clear that although Africa may need a substantial injection
of concessional resources in the short-term, in the medium and
long-term the private sector is where the opportunities for growth,
on which everything else depends, must come. In addition to that,
following a breakfast meeting with the Chancellor of the Exchequer
in early September a number of business groups have already been
set up within this country too to give particular advice on particular
areas of the investment. Thank you for pointing out that OECD
publication, which I will make sure we have a look at.
Q9 Mr Colman: You did not mention amongst
that the CDC partners, which of course is still involved with
DFID, and is clearly involved in getting venture capital into
Africa in many different ways. Is that as an institution giving
evidence to you, working with you in terms of developing a business
side to the Commission for Africa?
Mr Wickstead: Yes, it is, and
the CDC is chairing one of eight little groups that were set up
following the Chancellor's breakfast, to give us advice.
Q10 Tony Worthington: I applaud the Commission
and support it fully and I am pleased it is short-term and I am
pleased it is being linked in with G8 and EU, and that is great.
If we are going to have lift-off, that is the way to do it. But
I am a bit concerned, because of it being very short-term, what
you do about the things where we do not know what we want to do.
At the moment we are all acting as if we all know what needs to
be done, like the finance facility and so on, but there are some
areas where we have arrived at where we are still not clear what
we should do. You mentioned agriculture there and I think there
is utter confusion about what should be done about Africa and
agriculture; a lack of capacity in the ministries; a failure by
the developed countries to appreciate that you cannot solve that
before next May, and you do not have the international mechanisms
that work. The example I would give as well to that is governance.
This wonderful word which means goodness, or something, and everyone
is to have good governance. The more I see Africa the more I think
we have a lot of work to do on how we fit ideas of democracy and
universal human rights into that, and it is not working at the
moment, the idea of sending across the American pattern or British
pattern of two parties with sort of ideological differences. I
think there is a vacuum there at the moment about what good governance
that fits African traditions would look like. Do you agree? What
could come that would continue the work for the next 50 years
rather than the next six months?
Mr Wickstead: I do agree with
you. I think there is perhaps inevitably tension between a report
which we want to be short-term, very action-orientated, very focused,
and some of the needs and requirements which are definitely long-term.
There is also a tension about writing a report—and I repeat
which we hope will be short and focused—which will apply
to 40 or 50 African countries in a really rather short space,
when each of them has their own individual histories and their
individual models. I think the way I would cover the governance
question is that one thing which I hope distinguishes this Commission
from other Commissions is the effort that is being put into the
consultation and participation process. I mentioned the civil
society consultations, which we plan to hold across Africa. We
are very actively talking to the Diaspora in this country, and
I think what we are trying to do in some ways is to stimulate
the open environment, which will allow civil societies in each
African country to demand what it wants in terms of better governance,
better systems, better structures. I agree with you that there
is no short-term answer to this, but I think by helping to open
up, by trying to stimulate open debate we can make progress on
that. We have talked, for example, to the President of the Pan
African Parliament about having a session on the Commission at
their next session, which is likely to be early next year, and
I hope that that is precisely the sort of discussion we might
get into with them. On your other point about capacity, yes, of
course, clearly we are not going to resolve Africa's capacity
problems over the next six months and we have to look at ways
of supporting Africa's development at the same time recognising
that it may take a new generation of people to come up through
the education system who can then fully bear that burden. I do
not think we have any answers to that yet, but we may have some
better ideas in six months' time than we have now.
Q11 Tony Worthington: One of the areas
that interests me is at the same time you have this review of
the United Nations and these organisations going on, and these
have all just grown. People often talk about the overlap, but
I think there are gaps as well. Do you have the idea that one
of the things that your experiences might lead to is to be able
to have a continuing work, that is about international institutions
and how they relate? Because if you simply put it back into nation
states I think that has its own inadequacies.
Mr Wickstead: I think I can answer
you in a rather general way, which is there is a strong sense
within the Commission that Africa in particular needs to be given
a greater voice within the international organisations, not only
the UN system but the international financial institutions in
Washington. There is not time, for reasons we have explained,
for this Commission to come up with a detailed paradigm of how
that might be done. What it can do, I think, is flag that this
is a really important issue that then needs to be addressed, and
that work needs to be taken forward. So that could be one of the
recommendations where the Commission recommends very clearly that
action needs to be taken, but that action then needs to be taken
in a different sort of forum.
Q12 John Barrett: Mr Wickstead, I think
expectations are high about the work of the Commission and how
things are going to develop next year, but there are already a
number of papers, reports, opinions, investigations, and so much
has been done over the years. What has been done by the Commission
that has not been done by any other group or organisation, or
what is its unique selling point?
Mr Wickstead: As I said earlier,
I do not think, as a result of our analysis or our research, or
whatever, we are suddenly going to come up with half a dozen new
ideas that nobody has thought of before. I think this is a political
opportunity; it is an opportunity to bring together all the best
of what is already out there. We have a team of analysts working
with us to bring that all together, to identify any gaps in the
research and the analysis, to do some new work as required, but,
broadly speaking, these recommendations will be based on what
is already there, what already exists. I think that what is different
about this Commission is that opportunity to bring it all together
in a year when the UK really has an opportunity to carry forward
the recommendations of the Commission, with a reasonably good
chance that the UK, through its Presidency of the G8 and the European
Union, will be able to drive through recommendations on things
that we all know should be done, but which have always fallen
short at the last hurdle. Issues on the volume of development
assistance, on aid effectiveness, on debt, on trade policy, on
agriculture, all those things where I think there is broad consensus
that action needs to be taken but which, for whatever reason—and
I think the reason is political will—has not yet been done.
This is all about political will, I think.
Q13 John Barrett: Can I just follow up
on the political dimension? There is a probability or a possibility
of the reports produced in March, that between March and the G8
in July there will be an opportunity for the report to be used
as a bit of a political football. The Government, giving credit
where credit is due, has done a lot of good stuff. The problem
I would see is that the Commission report is then hijacked during
April, in the run-up to a potential general election. Has some
thought been given to that by the Commission, that this must not
happen?
Mr Wickstead: I am not sure that
we have given it much thought in the Secretariat to date. I think
my answer to your question would be that we have been tremendously
encouraged by the cross-party support that we have received for
the work of the Commission; that I think there is across the board
a recognition that we need to do more for Africa. If you got that
uniformity of purpose and will perhaps there is not that much
that the report could be used for in terms of short-term political
ends. I think probably at the end of the day that is not a question
for me, it is a question for political parties and the Government
to address, but I very much hope that on this issue at least politicians
of all persuasions can be persuaded to get behind a common agenda.
Q14 Mr Davies: Mr Wickstead, two questions,
if I may. You are clearly not a naive man and you will be aware
that there is some scepticism among cynics—and the British
public are a very cynical public now where politics are concerned—about
this initiative, and there is a feeling in some quarters that
it will have been dreamt up by spin doctors with the aim of giving
the Prime Minister at once a caring, humane and also an international
statesmanship image at the right moment in an electoral cycle,
and of course it is an agreeable travelling circus for you and
for the African politicians and Civil Servants taking part, and
so everybody can be happy about it. If, in fact, as you have just
told us this afternoon, you do not expect to come up with any
original ideas, you merely expect to repeat or reinforce arguments
that are very important but that are familiar about the need to
remove trade barriers and the damage done by the CAP and American
agricultural policy, and so on and so forth; and if also, as you
have told us this afternoon, this is not going to be a forum at
which a decision is going to be taken, whether by African countries
or by ourselves, all you are going to be doing is making a report
and passing on your recommendations to other groups and other
meetings, the G8 and the EU, and what have you, are you not in
danger of validating that cynicism? If I may say, I do not necessarily
share that cynicism. My attitude in life is if someone comes up
with a constructive proposal it should be looked at on its merits
and one should take it at face value until there is a reason not
to do so, and obviously you do not share that cynicism. But there
must be a danger of that cynicism being reinforced if the ideas
are not original and there is no action taken during the course
of the Commission's life; is that not right?
Mr Wickstead: I think it is absolutely
right that if nothing changes in the world as a result of this
process and this report then we will have failed in the task that
has been given to us. I think that all I can ask you to do is
withhold judgment and look back on this process at the end of
next year and see whether this report and this process have led
to a truly significant—
Q15 Mr Robathan: Will you come back in
a year's time?
Mr Wickstead: I will be delighted
to appear before this Committee any time I am invited. I sincerely
believe that we can make a difference, that there is a genuine
political opportunity here, which we must seize, because I think
if we do not take these actions next year Africa really will be
left behind in moving towards the Millennium Development Goals.
If the report does not have action-orientated, focused recommendations,
which are then implemented, we will not have done the job that
we set out to do. So I have encountered some of the scepticism,
the cynicism myself, and I think all I can say to people at the
end of the day is that I do not think that that scepticism and
cynicism will be justified, but you will have to judge us by the
results.
Q16 Mr Davies: I shall personally be
very happy to keep an open mind, exactly as you ask, Mr Wickstead.
Mr Wickstead, you may be aware that we discussed this matter a
few months ago with your colleague, Mr Chakrabarti, and some of
us suggested that with a view to broadening this exercise beyond
the often rather narrowly constituted—if I can politely
put it that way—executive branches of government in many
African countries, and also to give a boost to our commitment
to the growth of African democracy, we should try to involve national
parliaments, and we volunteered to take part in any meetings or
initiatives which might come forward with that in view. Mr Chakrabarti
was rather favourable to this idea but absolutely nothing has
emerged as a result. Do you know why that is?
Mr Wickstead: We have been talking
to a number of your colleagues precisely about that point, about
how we can work with national parliaments in Africa, with the
Pan African Parliament, with the European Parliamentarians for
Africa [AWEPA] group, that Helen Jackson, your colleague in the
Commons is very active with; we have arranged with the Pan African
parliament that the Commission will be invited to give evidence
to their next session at the beginning of 2005. We ensure that
in our consultations around Africa we talk as much as we can to
civil society, including parliamentarians. So I think there is
rather a lot going on on those links, and I am very aware that
you and many of your colleagues are keen to become involved in
this, and I will get back and find out in detail what is going
on and we would be delighted to have your support and help in
this.
Q17 Mr Davies: I think both those phrases,
"We would be delighted to have your support and participation"
and "We will get back to you" were the exact quotations
of what we heard from Mr Chakrabarti, but it was only two or three
months ago and two or three months is probably a very short time
in DFID's perception of life.
Mr Wickstead: Let me make it clear,
if I may, that of course we are an independent Commission and
an independent Secretariat. Although we are very grateful to DFID
for the funding they provide to our Secretariat and our offices,
et cetera, and of course we talk to DFID about some things,
we are kind of on separate tracks and it is important that we
are seen to be and are perceived as being independent and separate.
Of course the Government has a responsibility to carry forward
the recommendations of the Commission but the report itself will
be an independent report and we will be taking that forward in
our own way and not linking up with the Government in all respects.
Q18 Mr Davies: We have noted your words
and will remember them. Mr Wickstead, finally, do you expect,
in so far as you can anticipate—and I am sure as a good
Chairman you have a pretty clear agenda in your mind—that
your recommendations will be largely directed at British government
or at other developed country potential donor governments
in terms of what we ought to be doing or how we ought to be doing
it, to what extent they will be directed at African governments
or potential or actual recipient governments in terms of what
policy initiatives or reforms they might be undertaking, and to
what extent (if at all) you will be focusing on the link between
the two, which is really conditionality, which is the extent to
which we have been successful in the past in trying to use our
own aid effort as leverage to procure more positive, less perverse
policies on the part of recipients, and to turn this thing into
a more effective partnership? Can you give us a feeling as to
how you weigh in your own mind at this fairly early stage the
relative importance of those three aspects?
Mr Wickstead: Yes, I can. I think
the answer to your question is that the report will primarily
have recommendations for the G8 and the European Union. As I explained
earlier, I see the Commission for Africa being very much the mirror
image of NEPAD, that NEPAD is an Africa-owned initiative, which
is designed to put together actions really which are essential
for African governments and African civil societies, without which
development cannot take place. It is then the role of the international
community to get behind that NEPAD agenda and the Commission's
recommendations will be essentially geared towards that, to what
the international community needs to do to support NEPAD. Of course,
development, as we know, cannot work well where you do not have
good governance, where you do not have peace and security. But
I think we have detected very significant progress in a number
of those areas in a number of African countries recently. On the
issue of ownership it was interesting—and I am sure he will
not mind me quoting him—that at the Africa Investment Forum
four weeks ago Trevor Manuel, the South African Finance Minister
said, "If I were a donor or if I were a private sector company
I would neither give aid nor would I invest in any African country
which has not signed up to the Africa Peer Review Mechanism."
I think that is a bit of an indication of that shift that we must
give Africa the sort of policy space that it needs to make its
own decisions. But I think there is a large and important role
for us to support in particular those countries which make those
right and brave decisions.
Q19 Mr Battle: While of course there
is a challenge to Africa and other countries, I thought that the
killer fact in the Africa facts that were before the Commission
at the October meeting was the fact that Africa's share of world
trade has declined, it has gone down, and I take the view—perhaps
rather naively—that the poor are offered a teaspoon of aid
with one hand while the other hand grips the windpipe with the
word "trade" blazed across the arm. I just ask the question
because I wonder whether the real challenge is integrating policies
and ideas, rather than simply looking at governance, and by that
I think the words used are "policy coherence". When
we look at trade issues, migration issues, arms exports, climate
change, corruption and debt, I am perhaps not as sanguine as you
when you said that there was a broad consensus on trade and debt.
I do not think there is. I think often those policies can be completely
operated in contradiction to development for African countries.
So the challenge then echoes back—I was reminded when we
were talking about the war by one of my colleagues, it was the
great Northern Irish poet, MacNeice, who used the word "coherence"
and he said, "Remember that coherence faces a flux of bonfires".
You talk coherence but all around are bonfires and I wondered
whether this report not just ought to be noted by the G8 and the
EU, but ought to be a real challenge to the policies of G8 and
EU countries. Perhaps time would be better spent in Brussels lobbying
Peter Mandelson, the new Trade Commissioner, rather than meeting
in Addis Ababa.
Mr Wickstead: I think there is
space for each of those things. I think coherence is vital and
I think the international community has not been coherent in the
past. Many trade and agricultural policies are completely contrary
to what the international community has sought to do through its
development programmes. I think for many countries in Africa or
elsewhere, if you simply lifted all of the restrictions on trade
and removed agricultural subsidies that would be much better for
them than however much development assistance you could put into
those countries. Again, perhaps I am naive, but I do feel that
there has been a shift recently, and in the discussions which
we have had with the Commission in Brussels we have spent some
time with them as well as having meetings in Africa.
Mr Battle: Good.
Mr Wickstead: I do detect, at
least amongst officials, that there is a recognition that the
order of trade policy and agricultural policies is no longer sustainable;
that it is wrong and that it must be changed. Whether we can change
it completely in one go, I do not know, but I am clear that it
is timely that that shift will now happen and that we are going
to be pushing on doors which are beginning to open, which were
completely closed before. It will be very important that the senior
members of HMG interact, as you suggest, with the new Commission,
which will be in place as a whole over the next few weeks, in
order to persuade them, I hope, that massive change is required
in these important areas of trade policy and agriculture subsidies.
1 Commission for Africa Consultation Document, Action
for a strong and prosperous Africa, November 2004, http://www.commissionforafrica.org/getting_involved/consultationdocument.htm Back
2
United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) 2005 African
Governance Report: http://www.uneca.org/agr/ Back
3
OECD Principles of Corporate Governance (2004): http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/32/18/31557724.pdf Back
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