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

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Wednesday 8th September 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, not least because it gives me a rare opportunity to agree with two things that he said: first, that the Government should spell out sooner rather than later a post-Brexit trade framework ambition for our relationships with African countries, and, secondly, that they should facilitate rather than discourage the development of a pan-African free trade area.

I congratulate my noble friend Lady Anelay and her committee on producing a comprehensive and valuable report—so comprehensive that, in the few minutes available to us, one could not comment on it generally. I have been interested in these subjects since my first career was working on aid and development projects in Africa and Asia. That led to me being appointed by David Cameron to chair his global poverty commission along with Bob Geldof—an unlikely pairing, you might think—which in turn led to the formation of the Trade Out of Poverty group where my noble friend Lord Hastings, whom I believe I am allowed to call my noble friend, and I were initially and subsequently chairmen, with great and invaluable support from the noble Lord, Lord Boateng.

At a conference organised by that group to coincide with the meeting of Commonwealth Trade Ministers, I was struck by the different priorities of the European and African contributors. The European contributors, myself included, talked about the importance of facilitating trade, removing barriers, encouraging and supporting education, shifting the emphasis of aid to helping in the development of the economy and trade and that sort of thing. The African delegates politely agreed with that but then focused on one word, which, to my astonishment and that of most people, they all without exception repeated again and again: electricity. They said, “We cannot develop without electricity. Our development depends on developing our electricity, and unless and until we electrify our economies we will not grow or develop.”

I do not often have a good word to say for Vladimir Ilyich Lenin but he said the future prosperity of Russia depended on two things, Soviet communism and electricity, and he was half right. You cannot develop without electrifying your economy, and we have to recognise that. Industry cannot function without a regular, reliable and economical supply of electricity. Education is hampered if people cannot study because they have no light to work by and read by in the evenings. Hospitals cannot function if they cannot run refrigerators and other equipment because they have no regular and reliable source of electricity. Female emancipation, above all, cannot proceed if women are unable to leave the home and domestic tasks because they cannot have refrigerators, washing machines and the other things that have played a major part in freeing women in so many parts of the developed world from some of those chores.

Since I worked in Africa, the supply of electricity has improved, but unfortunately in many areas it has been outstripped by the actual, let alone potential, demand for electricity. Blackouts, shortages and the sheer absence of electricity are widespread. Although references to electricity in the report are few, I am glad that paragraph 333 mentions the availability of

“‘strong DfID support, both technical and financial’ for the African Development Bank’s efforts to ensure that the 250 million people in the region without access to electricity and energy were able to get this off grid.”

Unfortunately, that is qualified in the next paragraph by a report saying that

“it was important to ‘make sure that we do not subsidise the use of fossil fuels or investment in them, and that we do subsidise the use of, and develop, renewables’”.”

It is also reported that

“The UK’s aid budget was ‘going much more into renewables than into fossil fuels’”,


and since then that has been intensified.

Obviously, renewables may be the optimal way to provide electricity in parts of Africa where you are distant from, and unable to be connected to, a grid—the sun is a lot more plentiful there than here, and in some places wind is also well available—but even in Africa the sun does not shine at night and the wind does not blow all the time, so you need batteries. The combination of intermittent renewables and batteries is hideously expensive. It may be cheaper than anything else if you are a long way from the grid, but we should not kid ourselves that it is cheap.

For urban areas—the population of Africa is increasingly living in urban areas—renewables are far more expensive than reliance on fossil fuels. Some armchair commentators in this country, who certainly do not fall into the category of experts, claim that renewables are cheaper. If that is so, wonderful—there would be no problem. If renewables were cheaper, no African country would waste its resources on a more expensive source of electricity, would it? They are not stupid. Or are we going to base our policy on the assumption that African Governments do not know what they are talking about and are too unwise and ill educated to choose the cheaper source of electricity over the more expensive?

They are trying to develop fossil fuel plants, but of course they cannot get loans and assistance from international organisations, or from us, to do so. It is surely arrogant and patronising of us to say that they are going about these things in the wrong way. We have to decide: should we help them to electrify their economies in the most economic way by offering technical advice and, if need be, access to finance, or should we withhold such assistance and even put obstacles in their way and the threat of punitive tariffs on their exports if they do not rely on renewables?

Those who argue that we should use every method that we can to guide, force and coerce them to use more expensive renewables, rather than cheaper fossil fuels, say that we should do so because African countries, and poor countries in general, are more vulnerable to climate change. They are right—that is true—but poor countries are vulnerable to climate change because they are poor. We are much less vulnerable because we are developed. They will reduce their vulnerability only if they develop and they will develop only if they have access to electricity. I rest my case. We should not stand in the way of Africa developing itself in the way that Africans think is best for them.