Sub-Saharan Africa (Report from the International Relations and Defence Committee)

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Wednesday 8th September 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I and, no doubt, my noble friend Lord Oates’s publisher, are delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, has read his Africa memoirs. For those who have not, we both commend them very warmly to the Committee.

I declare my interest in the register. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the other noble Lords who referenced Sudan that it was the last country I visited, last March. I was stranded when it declared a state of emergency and closed the international airport. If anything, it brought home to me the vulnerability that many countries had when the pandemic struck in terms of not only immediate health but the ongoing economic impact. I have had a very close relationship with Sudan. It was therefore right that this committee started with an understanding of the impact—not just the immediate impact but what are likely to be very long-term consequences—of the pandemic on sub-Saharan Africa.

As others on the committee have said, it was a pleasure to serve under the chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay. She led the committee and our inquiry report in an open and inclusive manner. It took as its starting point how robust the Government’s self-described Africa strategy was in relation to the African Union’s own strategy for 2063, for example in the 2019 Joint Communiqué on the African Union-United Kingdom Partnership. We were told that just one initial example of what was then referred to as the new strategy was the “pivot to the Sahel”. However, as the noble Baroness indicated, there was only one reference in the integrated review, and that reference was to our support for the French deployment. As we have now seen, and as was referred to by the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, the change to that deployment under President Macron raises questions. I hope that the Minister can say whether it is the Government’s intention now to change this element of the integrated review.

Overall, the committee concluded in paragraphs 82 and 83 that

“the Government’s new ‘strategic approach’ to Africa falls short. It is not a strategy, but rather some broad ideas and themes, and there is little clarity on how the Government plans to put it into action … Communication of the new ‘strategic approach’ to Africa has been confused and confusing … and has relied on jargon”.

The Government’s position did not remove that confusion because the last witness the inquiry heard from was the Minister for Africa, James Duddridge, who told the committee:

“In my mind, we have a very clear strategy. We are acting on that strategy and organising ourselves and our resources around it. One of the tests that I apply to everything I do is: how does it contribute to the Africa strategy? That is alongside other tests, such as value for money, the manifesto commitments and so forth. It is very much a real document.”


However, the Government’s response to the report said this on page 5:

“A single strategy document for such a diverse continent would not be effective, nor is a continent-wide strategy usual practice.”


Either it is or it is not. Recent government documents and statements in the integrated review on an approach to the Indo-Pacific suggest that such a diverse area seems to warrant a strategy, so why not sub-Saharan Africa, or Africa and our relationship with the African Union?

However, the confusing position within government tells a deeper truth, which has been highlighted in this debate. Statements have been provided with grandiose assertions and ambitions, whereas the reality seen by our partners never reaches those ambitions. The shockingly high turnover of Ministers and the lack of seniority of ministerial visits, as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and my noble friend Lord Oates highlighted, are illustrative. Of more substance is that in 2018 the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom gave a commitment in Africa that the UK was to be the biggest investor in Africa in the G7 by 2022, but there was subsequently no public statement by the Government on why this was scrapped just 18 months later. The Government hoped that people had not noticed, but the African Union did and so did China, at the very time—as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, highlighted—when many countries are now much more sceptical of the strategic debt policy of China and much more open to the approach of investment from the UK and other, similar countries. I am afraid the Government need to explain why this was the case. I asked the Minister why the target was dropped. He said:

“Our competitors are investing heavily. Financially, China is eating up a lot more of that investment opportunity than before. It makes hitting a crass target of being the largest harder and harder.”


So something has moved from being a target by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to being “crass”. I ask, as did the noble Lord, Lord Grocott: what, therefore, is the ambition for UK investment in Africa?

The second area in which we have reneged on a leadership position, as my noble friend Lord Oates and the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, highlighted, is the real and devastating impact of UK development co-operation cuts. It is not so much a cut in aid as a cut in co-operation and partnership. British embassies and high commissions have spent the last six months telling scores of UK and Africa-based NGOs and charities to ask USAID and the EU to fill funding gaps. This is humiliating for the UK missions around the subcontinent and it is leaving unhelpful vacuums that others may fill.

In his letter to the IDC in the Commons, the Foreign Secretary highlighted the countries in sub-Saharan Africa where UK bilateral co-operation is being cut in its entirety. When the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, asked the Minister to reassert the position on aid, he replied:

“I will go back, if I may, to something that I should have said and which is truly amazing. We are still one of the few nations that delivers on 0.7% GNI. The fact that we do not still bash that around as a debatable is fantastic. We should be very proud of that.”


We were very proud of that.

The Government have failed to publish anything on soft power, covering education, wider rule of law issues and cultural and societal partnerships. It is of interest to me, for example, that this Friday the African Union-China human rights dialogue is convening. There will no doubt be a very powerful counternarrative on this subject from Beijing. What is the UK’s response? As we leave the field in many respects, reneging on leadership, it will be filled by others.

As the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, my noble friend Lord Oates, the noble Baroness, Lady Fall, and others highlighted, this is a region of countries with young populations who are also more globally minded than previously and led by Governments who are more democratic and stable than ever before, as the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, said. They seek co-operation to meet global challenges but they look objectively at our approach and the actions that our Governments address. If we leave the field, renege on leadership and become less reliable, others will fill this gap, which means that when we want to bring together coalitions of the willing to defend our positions around the world, we will find fewer partners as a result.