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Sub-Saharan Africa
6.9 p.m.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire rose to call attention to the case for concerted international action, particularly among European Union member states, to promote democracy and sustainable development in sub-Saharan Africa; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I start by welcoming the Minister to the debate. I gather that she has just got off a plane. I cannot remember from
which continent. I recognise that Foreign and Commonwealth Office Ministers have relatively short shelf lives, partly because exhaustion sets in after the first 255 trans-continental flights. She has been doing extremely well on Zimbabwe, as we all recognise. We on these Benches do not intend that this debate should focus on Zimbabwe, as the House has had many other opportunities to discuss that and, sadly, will no doubt wish to have more. We want to focus on the broader issue of sub-Saharan Africa and what needs to be the British, European and developed world's response.In recent months, especially since September 11th, we have spent a lot of time talking about states of concern—weak states, failed states or what the Americans call "rogue" states. There has been great focus on Afghanistan, in the past on Libya, on Iraq and on North Korea. In Africa, there has been a greater focus on Somalia and—on what many of us feel to be unjustified grounds—on Sudan.
But there is a far larger number of weak states across sub-Saharan Africa and a sadly small number of competent states with sound administrations and growing economies. Of the more than 40 states in sub-Saharan Africa, we can point to a few moderate success stories. There is progress in Senegal, for example, where the government have changed through democratic processes at least once and, with luck, will do so again. In spite of everything, Mozambique appears to be beginning to grow.
Thanks to intelligent and well-measured intervention by the British Government, Sierra Leone appears so far to be a major success in conflict resolution, although one must say of the Sierra Leone intervention that it was not entirely about Sierra Leone but involved the question of Liberia and the Ivory Coast—the spill-over of conflict across the region was part of the problem. The conduct of some UN forces from other African states in the inefficient UN intervention also proved to be part of the problem.
Having said that, however, many more states in Africa share the combination of problems that contribute to state collapse and internal conflict. Many of us remember that in 1960 the average income in Africa was estimated to be of the same order as that of south-east Asia. While south-east Asia has, on the whole, gone through extremely rapid growth, Africa has gone backwards. The population has doubled; poverty has doubled with it.
We may read, for example, of the widespread and deep corruption in Kenya, of accusations of vote-rigging in the recent elections in Zambia and of the deep problems in Congo—where the recent volcanic eruption comes on top of sustained civil war, with foreign armies intervening partly to exploit Congo's resources for foreign public and private ends. Rwanda and Burundi have still not entirely recovered from the dreadful massacres and conflicts there. There have been recent riots in Nigeria and, of course, the dreadful explosions in Lagos. Nigeria suffers from a widespread popular mistrust of the state and of the army. An unnecessary border war has again broken out between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
There are many common features to all of those problems. There is the exploitation of resources for private gain rather than for economic development. Those resources may be oil, as in Nigeria, Angola and some parts of the Sudan, diamonds—conflict diamonds, as they are called—or tropical wood, which, it is alleged, some companies with concessions in Congo are taking out of the country through neighbouring countries for private gain. Those countries share corrupt governments exploiting their own people. Even some governments who have been democratically elected hesitate to follow democratic rules or basic standards of good governance once in office.
There are many cross-border conflicts. The spill-over across the artificial borders with which the European powers left Africa of criminal networks, private armies, state armies pursuing private profits, refugees and migrants compounds the problems that Africa faces. Cheap weapons are traded for illegal exports. All of that contributes to social collapse, which includes the spread of disease. The World Health Organisation estimates that about 25 million people in Africa have AIDS. There are outbreaks of cholera and tuberculosis—and occasional diseases such as Ebola.
That is the pessimistic picture. When I read the World Bank group report, Can Africa Claim the 21st Century?, I noted that it attempts to be much more optimistic, with an emphasis on success stories. But even that report notes that the region needs to grow by at least 5 per cent a year to keep the number of poor from rising, given what is happening to the African population. If the percentage living in dire poverty is to be halved by 2015—to which the international community has committed itself—that means a huge effort to help Africa to develop. The report points out:
- "Africa accounts for barely 1 percent of global GDP and only about 2 percent of world trade. Its share of global manufactured exports is almost zero".
If that is the best that one can do in terms of optimism, we clearly have many problems to face.
I remember Bob Geldof talking about the famine in Ethiopia some years ago and saying, in the wonderfully politically incorrect way that only someone like him could, that the underlying problem was that Ethiopia was a country with a 14th century government struggling to cope with 20th century weapons and technology. The noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour, said to me a while ago, "I understand that Scotland was rather like that at one time". We should not be too colonialist in that respect. We should recognise that, after all, African countries are attempting in two generations to move through stages of economic and social growth and state-building that took European states several centuries to go through. Our states went through many disastrous wars and internal conflicts and massacres before we emerged from that period.
So it is not surprising that a continent that was in a pre-modern, tribal state—as with clanned Scotland not that long ago—should find it difficult to cope with
that rapid transition. Of course, the issues are all interlinked. I note that the World Bank report has as one of its sub-headings,
- "Improving Governance, Managing Conflict and Rebuilding States".
Conflict resolution is a painful process; nation-building takes a long time. In this debate, we want to address the question: what is the appropriate British and international response? Many of us are happy with the way in which the Department for International Development has tackled that during the past four years, including linking defence to development and its focus on Africa. But many of us were also rather taken by surprise by the tone of the Prime Minister's speech in Brighton last October, in which he started by saying:
- "The state of Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world. But if the world as a community focused on it, we could heal it. And if we don't, it will become deeper and angrier".
- "And I tell you if Rwanda happened again as it did in 1993, when a million people were slaughtered in cold blood, we would have a moral duty to act there also".
One of the first questions that we must discuss in this debate is: does that pitch our ambitions too high? Is there any prospect that the British Government will find the resources—the money, the troops or the police and civilian officials to follow—to sustain the Prime Minister's claims? I should like to focus on two themes. First, that sort of ambition is far beyond the capability of Britain on our own. Any British government who declared such ambitions should spell out how exactly they propose to work with others to pursue them and through which multilateral frameworks. Secondly, we should be careful not to adopt too moral a tone or any sense in which it is our duty to bring the dark continent into the light, with all the echoes of Christian imperialism and the white man's burden that that will arouse among African leaders and in the sceptical and self-interested voters who take part in British elections.
Instead, we should make it clear that European governments have no alternative but to engage in the reconstruction of sub-Saharan Africa. It is a matter of self-interest, but enlightened self-interest. Globalisation—to use a word beloved of third way theorists—means that the spill-over of conflicts in Africa into Europe is almost immediate in terms of asylum seekers and refugees. There are 100,000 Somalis in London who were not here 12 years ago. Many of them got here illegally, and many of them are still here illegally. If Sierra Leone had collapsed, we would have had hundreds of thousands—tens of thousands, at least—of Sierra Leoneans.
There is a spill-over of disease. Tuberculosis has come back into this country from south Asia and Africa. There is a spill-over of criminal networks involved in drug smuggling and trafficking in women from west Africa. About once a week, I get an e-mail from someone in Sierra Leone, Nigeria or wherever, suggesting that I might just help in some fraudulent transaction or other. Europe is dependent on the resources of Africa—oil from Nigeria and Angola, tropical products of one sort or another. To make a light point, I must say that for those, like me, for whom chocolate is a necessity of life, Africa is extremely important.
We need a concerted multilateral response, engaging the United States, Japan and other developed countries as far as we can, while recognising that the main responsibilities and the costs will fall upon European Governments. Africa is central to a more effective European common foreign and security policy. The United States has made it clear that its priorities lie elsewhere; it tends to be concerned with the Middle East and central Asia, while Africa is a matter for the Europeans.
Africa is central to an effective European security and defence policy. When we discuss the Petersberg tasks, I hear European defence officials talk about matters ranging from flood relief in Mozambique all the way up to preventing conflict and social breakdown in an African state—the low end and the high end of the Petersberg tasks. We want the British Government to put the moral prime ministerial approach into a more specifically European context. I welcome the image of Jack Straw and Hubert Vedrine travelling through Africa together. That is far better than the old rivalry between France and Britain that we saw even during the last Congo conflict and the Great Lakes catastrophe. However, that is not yet enough; there must be a broader European response.
Her Majesty's Government should spell out to our European partners a broad agenda, as we raise our development budget to the European average and beyond, to encourage others to do likewise, when there are many other calls on EU and national budgets. Secondly, we should continue to press for reform and greater efficiency in the Commission's development assistance programme. It is getting a little less inefficient and corrupt, but there is still a long way to go. Thirdly, we should co-ordinate national programmes and efforts more effectively. Fourthly, as the Prime Minister said in his Brighton speech, we should open up access to European markets to exports from these countries. Many of us will remember with deep embarrassment the long time that it took to sort out the South African trade agreement. Southern EU member states did their best to block that, for self-interested reasons. Fifthly, we should pursue more explicitly a European security and defence policy that recognises that the African continent is part of where we need to send our forces. It means that we need long-range airlift, something about which the Italian and German Governments are still not entirely convinced. Sixthly, we should join up EU policy on immigration,
asylum and refugees with the common foreign and security policy and with development aid. Lastly, we should as far as possible draw other governments outside Europe into partnership with the EU's efforts.That is an ambitious agenda. I hope that people can be persuaded that it is a matter of enlightened self-interest. Nation building is a thankless and long-term task. Conflict resolution, as Britain has learnt in Northern Ireland and as we are all learning in former Yugoslavia, takes at least a generation. On the other hand, Sierra Leone has been a success. This morning, one of my colleagues quoted a French saying at me:
- "Africa is the last place on earth where with a battalion you have the chance of changing history".
6.26 p.m.
Baroness Whitaker: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, on securing a debate on such urgent problems for our time. It would be daunting to attempt to follow his magisterial sweep, so I shall confine myself to narrower areas that are significant barriers to democracy and sustainable development: corruption, which has eroded the democratic power of the voter and the citizen; short-sighted disregard on the part of trading partners that ignores sustainable development and has created trade barriers that are grossly inequitable; and a means of financing better development.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, that we should disaggregate sub-Saharan Africa. For some years, Botswana has taken its place as a democratic inhabitant of the upper income group. Mali and Senegal, which I visited last September, are poor but peaceable, not noticeably corrupt and perfectly at home with democracy. Cape Verde, to the west, has a parliamentary opposition whose loyalty would leave ours standing. Those countries need direct investment in keeping with sustainable development and more equitable terms of trade. The Government's International Development Bill will help, with its power to enable the Government to underwrite or take a share in the kind of direct investment that the traditional commercial companies, so devoted to capital-intensive projects and mineral extraction, will not undertake.
As a former bureaucrat, I am keen on the underpinning of democracy by proper tax collection, accurate national records, accountability and probity in public officials. Those are the elements of good governance, as the noble Lord said. I congratulate the Department for International Development on its programmes to enhance the capability of the state in all those areas. Those programmes should be replicated by the international community. They will greatly assist with rooting out corruption. I declare an interest, as a council member of Transparency International (UK). Thriving national chapters of TI have strengthened local anti-corruption institutions in
many countries. The more support that such voluntary organisations of civil society have, the more citizens will have the confidence to tackle corruption at home.We know that much large-scale corruption, although it must have local partners, does not come from home. It is the destructive accompanying export of some of the major contracting companies that build public utilities in many sub-Saharan countries. Only concerted international action will do. Unilateral action may not even affect the problem. A seamless structure of international obligations, implemented in all states, is required.
I applaud the Government's initial implementation of the OECD Convention on Combating the Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in the Anti-Terrorism Act. That is a very good start. But the OECD will evaluate our legislation and may well find that we have some way to go. So the Government's announcement of a general review of the whole tapestry of anti-corruption legislation is welcome. Perhaps I may ask my noble friend on the Front Bench when it will report.
The European Union has agreed a code, for which the UK was in the forefront of support, which lists sustainable development as one of the key criteria in licensing exports. And the UK Export Credit Guarantee Department has in its mission statement that it will ensure that its activities accord with sustainable development. It also said,
- "we will continue to press for these criteria to be adopted internationally by all official lending and guarantee agencies".
Direct investment is the single most important influence on economic growth. For instance, Ethiopia, which I visited last September, is now, pace Bob Geldof, poised for economic take-off. Its war is over. The government have a sensible programme of economic liberalisation. It has a cohesive and active civil society with some expert NGOs to assist government capacity-building, staffed with high-calibre and dedicated Ethiopian expertise, like SoS Sahel, in which I declare an interest as a board member. But Ethiopia needs development investment like food processing industries near to the sites of agricultural production, so that people do not flock to the towns in search of jobs, and so that the whole locality can benefit from growth. It needs programmes to bring demobbed soldiers into food production.
If all those who are capable of being partners in foreign investment were to bind themselves to respect sustainable development, countries like Ethiopia would soon stop needing humanitarian aid.
Trade barriers are a negative concerted international action, if ever there was one. Following the World Bank's report on Global Economic Prospects 2002, I hope that we can move towards abolishing them.
Sub-Saharan countries themselves of course also have tariffs. But until their agricultural exports have fair global market access, as my right honourable friend the Prime Minister said, they cannot
accumulate the resources for their own development. Subsidies to OECD agriculture are equal to the whole of Africa's gross domestic product. The European Union has a large task here. I hope that my noble friend can say what efforts the Government are making to propel European action in this direction.Finally, is not the development of a tax on international currency transactions, to finance development assistance, an idea whose time is rapidly advancing? I suggest that the United Nations conference, Financing for Development, to be held in Monterrey in two months' time, would be an excellent forum for reaching agreement on the principles of this imaginative proposal.
6.34 p.m.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, for introducing this important debate and to congratulate him on the enormous sweep of the subject he has chosen and, indeed, on the speech that he made. In many respects I wish that I could follow him, in particular in opening out the Prime Minister's policy, and in explaining to noble Lords and, I hope, persuading a few of my colleagues of the importance of realising that we have to achieve a fairer distribution and balance between resources and populations throughout the world if we are to achieve stability and democracy.
However, I cannot do that. That is because I once stood in a village in sub-Saharan Africa and watched a group of around 30 people waving placards as they held an impromptu dance in their street. It was a beautiful evening in a beautiful and prosperous country. The man standing next to me said with delight, "These people were throwing petrol bombs into each other's homes six weeks ago. Now they've swapped placards to celebrate the peace". The year was 1979; the date was 16th April; I was in the country we now call Zimbabwe; and it was eve of poll for the first round of independence elections. The placards were election placards, which were being swapped among supporters of the opposing parties. I have no other authority than that to speak to noble Lords, except for the reason why I was there, which I shall come to in a moment. Furthermore, I have no other interest to declare than my delight in, affection and esteem for those dancing people, along with the rest of the population of their then really beautiful and prosperous country.
What a contrast is the state of their country today, as well as the approach to the impending election. I venture to speak because I was privileged to be one of the five commissioners, headed by my noble friend the late Viscount Boyd of Merton, who reported on that election to my then right honourable friend and now noble friend Lady Thatcher, immediately after she became Prime Minister. The only threat we discovered to the fairness of that election was that Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo refused to take part, and that their Zanla and Zipra guerrillas respectively sought unsuccessfully to disrupt and discredit it. It is ironic that the then government of that country had to use military power to secure a fair
election against Robert Mugabe's efforts, and that Robert Mugabe's government now appears to be using every available force to enforce an unfair election, and that the head of his forces states that he will disregard the result if he does not like it.Our report, which is deposited with the papers held in the Library of the House, shows that we travelled over 2,000 miles to destinations of our own choice. We visited 66 polling stations. My colleagues, who stayed on after I had to return to the United Kingdom because of our own general election, also visited 17 counting centres. To give noble Lords only one of many indications of the extent of our independence, it was such that I was able to visit the country's biggest prison, enter every wing, see all its inmates, select a dozen at random, appoint one as interpreter and have the warders leave me entirely alone with them while I questioned them.
Is that what Robert Mugabe is afraid of, that people with the ear of a free Parliament might see how the coming election is conducted, that they might witness what has been done to the citizens of that country—which he found in prosperity and which, after almost a quarter of a century of independence, is now on the edge of bankruptcy—and hear what he has done to those citizens and what they think of him? If he is not afraid, he should let in the international observers right now, guarantee their safety and let them go wherever they want to go, see what they want to see, and talk to whom they want to talk.
I believe that, in spite of the unsatisfactory approach to them, the elections should go ahead. I say that, but no doubt noble Lords will have seen, for instance, the report of Physicians for Human Rights/Denmark, whose representatives have just returned from Zimbabwe with photographs of actual victims of torture. Your Lordships will have seen the news releases from the Movement for Democratic Change and know that the Government of Zimbabwe have ruled that everyone must have an identity card and that people cannot vote without divulging their identity. The authorities allowed some MDC members to enter an arena for an election rally. Leaving aside what went on between the authorities and the unfortunate people in the arena, their identity cards were removed when they left and the rest of the rally was prevented from taking place. All that should be known and will be known to the observers.
The election should proceed because the impressive feature of the much more peaceful elections that I witnessed was the extraordinary robustness of people when faced with attempts to intimidate them. The size of the turn-out—quite irrespective of who voted for whom—was an enormous endorsement of democracy and faith in the country, which I hope may still be rescued from complete destruction.
What is the present President of Zimbabwe seeking to protect by his extraordinary behaviour, apart from his ambition—which has been clear from the first? At the centre of Zimbabwe has been a steadily shrinking core of prosperity, security and comfort for those gathered around President Mugabe. It is that he is
defending—and those who benefit are supporting the president in his defence. I hope that every means will be taken to adopt the method known as smart sanctions, so that that wealthy, privileged and undemocratic core will be exposed to the same economic hardship as the rest of Zimbabwe, and that those at the centre of it will be named and their resources frozen. Then all of them will have an interest in a change of policy and in a country in which it will be possible to live safely and prosperously.We cannot do too much because—in the view of the propaganda with which Zimbabwe is being fed—we are tainted by a history of colonialism. Our colleagues in Europe are not so tainted. The greatest and best pressure can come from South Africa. Nelson Mandela has already spoken out. Our friends in Germany and, to a lesser extent, in France may have interests in Zimbabwe that they wish to protect.
Let us do whatever we possibly can to secure peace and democracy in Zimbabwe.
6.42 p.m.
Lord Joffe: My Lords, I declare an interest as a former chair of Oxfam and a trustee of a number of other development and human rights non-governmental organisations.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, for introducing this debate and giving us the opportunity to discuss issues that are of critical importance not only to the people of sub-Saharan Africa but also to those fortunate enough to live in the developed world. As the Prime Minister has said, one illusion was shattered on 11th September—that we can have the good life of the West, irrespective of the state of the rest of the world.
Before discussing the actions needed to promote democracy and sustainable development, regard must be had to the present prospects of the 591 million inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, spoke in some detail but I will risk repeating some of the statistics that he provided.
The prospects for those people are depressing—a dire present and a bleak future. Twenty seven million of them have HIV or AIDS; one third suffer from malnutrition; average life expectancy is 47 years, compared with an average of 77 years in OECD countries; and annual per capita GNP is only 530 dollars—barely one fortieth of the OECD average of 20,000 dollars, which is an astonishing and alarming difference.
The continent is wracked with war and conflict. In the Sudan, 2 million people have died in a civil war financed by government oil revenues. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2.5 million have died in the past five years, as seven African countries have involved themselves in furthering or protecting their interests. In Angola, one child in three never reaches the age of five and 78 per cent of the rural inhabitants live in abject poverty as a result of 28 years of war. Civil conflict and war rage also in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, Burundi and other countries.
Against that background, it is immensely encouraging that the Prime Minister and fellow G8 leaders are taking historic steps in working with African governments to tackle the continent's problems. They have convened a G8 Africa task force to address the issues—about which the Minister is, I am sure, far better informed—with a view to reporting to the G8 summit in June. Simultaneously, African leaders are developing their own new partnership for African development. Those initiatives give real hope of concrete progress towards the millennium development goal. It is particularly welcome that the Prime Minister is visiting Africa to discuss the continent's development agenda.
Broad agreement has been reached by senior officials of African governments and EU officials on eight priority areas, with the intention of developing joint action in each of them. Those areas are conflict prevention and resolution, including anti-personnel mines; co-operation and regional integration; integration of Africa in the world economy and trade; environment, including the fight against drought and desertification; HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases; food security; human rights and democracy; the restitution of stolen or illegally exported cultural goods; and Africa's external debt.
Those are all priorities on which there is broad agreement by the United Nations, the World Bank and others. It is an impressive list but the challenge is to move from identifying areas to producing achievable plans, then to translating them into concrete action. It is essential that EU governments and the rest of the developed world work in concert. As the noble Lord, Lord Wallace said, it is not possible for the United Kingdom alone to make a significant difference. Unless each nation honours its commitments, it will not be possible to make real progress.
That is well illustrated by past overseas development assistance. In 1970, it was agreed that 0.7 per cent of gross national product should be spent on ODA but that provided by the 22 members of the OECD's Development Assistance Committee in 2000 was, on average, only 0.22 per cent. If the DAC members had reached the 0.7 per cent target, aid would have increased by approximately 100 billion dollars per year. Estimates based on United Nations figures suggest that in the region of 25 billion dollars to 35 billion dollars per year would have been sufficient for Africa to achieve the targets set out in the 2015 development goals—which do not look as though they will be reached.
Working in concert requires a comprehensive and cohesive master plan, the constituent parts of which reinforce one another, rather than a series of one-off and sometimes contradictory activities. The Danish Government, which takes over the presidency of the EU in July, have in mind what they refer to as a "global deal", which is precisely such a plan. They also are believed to have agreed to treat sustainable development and the environment as a priority during their presidency.
There is no doubt about the good intentions expressed in the rhetoric of the developed countries. The challenge will be to match the rhetoric with action. A key part of that action will be the provision of much of the finance and resources that are required to implement the agreed action plans, and living with the consequences of opening their markets to exports from the developing countries.
Unless the developed countries are prepared to live with these consequences—which, in the short term, could have a negative impact on industries such as textiles and farming—they cannot expect the developing countries to open up their markets to the exports of the developed countries.
The eminent commentator, Martin Wolf, has pointed out in the Financial Times that the advanced countries insist that developing countries should adjust to market forces. Yet, notwithstanding their vastly greater ability to cushion the plight of the losers, the developed countries themselves have been unwilling to accept the same adjustments.
He also draws attention to the anti-dumping procedures that developed countries are determined to defend, even though it is clear that they are intrinsically protectionist and violate fundamental competition principles through, for example, the export subsidies which the EU provides on farm surpluses.
In summary, there is an exciting opportunity to transform the future of sub-Saharan Africa, but it comes at a cost in the short term to the developed nations of the world. Whether or not they will be willing to match their actions to their rhetoric and accept that cost will determine the outcome.
In conclusion, I should like to pay tribute to the Government for the lead they have given in addressing the issue of poverty, both in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere throughout the world, through the remarkable initiatives of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the work of the Secretary of State for DfID, supported by the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, and now through the lead taken by the Prime Minister. I should add that this tribute would have been even more fulsome if the Government had produced a timetable showing by when they aim to increase development aid assistance to the 0.7 per cent UN target, and if they had not inexplicably withdrawn sustainable development as a purpose for imposing export controls in the Export Control Bill. There is still time, though, to put it back.
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