The UK’s Relationship with Africa

Tony Baldry Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz).

My involvement with Africa started with a visit to Ethiopia in 1981, a couple of years before I was first elected to Parliament. I found Ethiopia to be a beautiful country and I subsequently became chair of the Anglo-Ethiopian Society. It was perhaps not surprising, therefore, that in late 1983, when Oxfam and a number of other non-governmental organisations were concerned that the international community was not taking sufficiently seriously the famine in Ethiopia, I was one of the small team of parliamentarians asked to travel with Oxfam to Addis and across the country so that we could report back first-hand to Parliament what we had seen.

By coincidence, our visit to Addis coincided with the now famous and simultaneous visit by Michael Buerk and a team from the BBC. They had been filming in South Africa and were due to come home but had some spare time and were looking for another story to cover. They were told there may be some food problems in Ethiopia and they arrived to discover, as we did, not just food problems but famine and starvation on a biblical scale.

As has happened so often in recent history, BBC film footage instantly flashed around the world and the international community responded. Literally within days, I found myself standing next to the then Secretary-General of the United Nations, who had flown in, and suddenly the attention of the whole world was on Ethiopia, with airports there soon supporting RAF Hercules planes and Russian transport planes delivering emergency food aid to rural populations.

Later that year, just before the House rose for Christmas, I made a speech on Africa, which I have re-read for the first time in many years for the purposes of preparing for this debate. I observed:

“This year the rains have failed in Africa, a continent where two-thirds of the world’s poorest people scratch a living that is precarious at the best of times…more than 20 million people are facing starvation in Africa…The Save the Children Fund estimates that some 1 million people face immediate starvation in the area of Ethiopia, Eritrea and the Sudan…food produced in Africa has increased by less than 2 per cent. a year…Africa is now the only part of the world that grows less food for its people now than it did 20 years ago…The areas hardest hit by drought and famine also seem to be those areas of civil war and political unrest, which in turn means that there are now millions of political refugees seeking safety, food and shelter in parts of Africa other than their homes.”

I concluded:

“I urge my right hon. Friend the Minister to do all that he can to initiate an urgent programme to help Africa feed itself”. —[Official Report, 19 December 1983; Vol. 51, c. 232-36.]

Interestingly, I also noted that the then Minister for Overseas Development had the previous week written a letter to The Guardian indicating that there were difficulties in giving food aid. It is interesting to note that, even as recently as 1983, giving food aid and humanitarian support was still seen as politically difficult. It was all too often regarded as being a value judgment on the country or the regime of the country to which the food aid was being sent.

I have been fortunate in my parliamentary career over the intervening 30 years to make frequent visits to different parts of Africa, including when I was a Foreign Office Minister with responsibility for overseas development before the Department for International Development was set up, and when I was fortunate to Chair the International Development Committee. I have also been fortunate to travel to Africa either in my capacity as a barrister or at my own expense, as happened recently when I visited Somalia and South Sudan.

Africa today, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge), who opened the debate, has made clear, is a continent of the most amazing energy, dynamism and enormous potential. It is a young continent with huge numbers of young men and women working hard to improve their lives.

It was to the credit of Tony Blair, when Prime Minister, that he set up the Commission for Africa. In fairness, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), as Chancellor, did much to support the development initiatives so that at Gleneagles in 2005 the major countries of the world agreed to double aid to Africa, provide 100% debt relief to eligible countries, and create the Investment Climate Facility for Africa, the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa and the business action plan for Africa. Gleneagles gave support to the creation of the UN Peacebuilding Commission, which led in due course to the UN commencing discussions on an international arms trade treaty later that year.

It is fair to say that since 2005 Africa has made extraordinary progress. It continues to have sustained average annual growth rates of about 6%, and foreign investment and exports have quadrupled. This overall progress has been largely driven by the efforts of African Governments themselves to make it easier to do business in their own country, supported by increased African and international investment in infrastructure.

There have been record levels of demand for African goods and particular demand for Africa’s natural resources. The relief for debt of way over $100 billion and a nearly 50% increase in aid to Africa over the past decade have helped African countries increase their spending on health, education and civil society. There has been a substantial increase in investment in infrastructure in Africa. Growing donor support for initiatives such as the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation have meant that more than 300 million children have been immunised with GAVI-supported vaccines. African Governments’ commitments alongside strong donor support have ensured access to antiretroviral treatments for HIV/AIDS to grow from below 15% in 2005 to well over 50% now. More children in Africa get to sleep under a bed net that can protect them from malaria than ever before, and more children go to primary school.

It is clear that Africa’s potential is enormous. Realising that potential is not just in Africa’s interests—it is in all our interests. During recent years, we have seen significant economic growth in Africa; a surge in trade investment; new relationships with countries such as China and other non-traditional partners; ever-increasing demand for African resources; and increased investment in areas vital to growth, paving the way to ever greater investment. There has been growing spending power in African households, and increased external aid alongside debt relief has helped to support African Governments’ efforts to promote growth and development. It has also helped to increase school enrolment rates, check the spread of HIV/AIDS, expand vital infrastructure and support African efforts to attract investment.

Many positive achievements and developments in Africa would not have happened if it had not been for the encouragement and persistence of international development aid, including international development from the UK. For example, Africa has continued to expand as a major market for mobile phone technology. For a long time, it has been one of the world’s fastest growing mobile phone markets. Mobile phone technology in Africa is now estimated to employ more than 3.5 million people, and the spread of mobile phones continues to change the way in which Africans communicate and to bring a wide range of benefits. African farmers and fishermen are using them to get better information about market prices for their goods, which enables them to make better judgments about when and where to sell their products. For example, the Kenyan Agricultural Commodity Exchange has partnered with Safaricom, Kenya’s largest cell phone company, to equip farmers with up-to-date commodity market prices via their phones.

There are, however, some serious buts for Africa, some of which are structural. African economies remain among the least diversified in the world, with approximately 80% of all African exports coming from oil, minerals and agricultural goods. Only 12% of recent growth in Africa has been in the agricultural sector, which employs 60% of the work force.

Increased investment in and improvements to Africa’s infrastructure have been major drivers in its recent growth, but massive gaps still remain between the infrastructure Africa has and the infrastructure it needs. It is disappointing that there has been little or no movement towards an agreement on the Doha development agenda for the removal of agricultural subsidies, or more significant trade agreements between the EU and African countries.

Africa is still hobbled in all too many areas by conflict, by corruption and, often, by limited governance. On conflict and violence, I do not think that we should allow the eruption of events last week in Iraq to overshadow the very considerable contribution made by the global summit to end sexual violence in conflict. It is worth noting that only as recently as the establishment of the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone on war crimes that the international community and international law held mass rape to be a war crime.

I think the whole House welcomes the lead taken by my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, who have campaigned for several years to arrange the global summit, because we all believe that the time has come to end the use of rape in war. Governments, experts, civil society, survivors and members of the public were brought together last week in an unprecedented concentration of effort and attention. On Thursday, representatives from 117 countries met to agree international protocols on the investigation and prosecution of sexual violence during war. I hope that last week’s summit will act as a catalyst, and that it will inspire concrete action to tackle sexual violence around the world so that conflict-related rape can no longer—and will no longer—be considered as an inevitable by-product of war.

The House will not be surprised, given my particular responsibilities in this place, if I mention the comments of the Archbishop of Canterbury at last week’s conference. He observed that it is very often Churches around the world that pick up the pieces after rape in war zones and are the main bulwark against such brutalisation, and that Churches throughout the world show women who have been violated love, humanity and dignity, and challenge the culture of impunity that exists in many war zones, besides seeking to promote equality between the sexes.

On corruption, it is good that the UK Government have taken an international lead with the Bribery Act 2010, and that the recent Queen’s Speech includes a new public register of beneficial ownership, through the small business, enterprise and employment Bill. The Bill is one of the outcomes of the 2013 UK-hosted G8 summit. It aims to limit the use of shell companies for tax evasion, fraud, money laundering and corruption, which is estimated to cost the developing world billions of dollars each year.

The recent initiatives by the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary on conflict and for reducing the impact of sexual violence are much to be welcomed—I am sure the Minister and other hon. Members will comment on them in detail—but it is difficult to underestimate the damage done to Africa by conflict.

For example, when I visited Somalia earlier this year the security situation was so bad that the Foreign Office would in effect allow me to make only a day visit to Mogadishu—and then to go no further than the British embassy, which is located in the airfield complex in Mogadishu—all because of the activities of al-Shabaab. The President of Somalia very kindly came to the British embassy to meet me. He and his Government are clearly working extremely hard to try to bring some normality to Somalia. However, the very day after I visited Mogadishu, there was a significant car bomb attack on the presidential palace, which killed a large number of people. It is of course difficult to see how any country can make progress in the 21st century if it is impossible for members of the international business community, journalists or other interested parties physically to visit the country, given such a terrorism threat.

My next visit—via Nairobi—was to Juba. The complexities of the conflict in South Sudan perhaps merit a full debate, and I hope that there may be time for one on Sudan and South Sudan in the Chamber or Westminster Hall at some point. There is no doubt that the conflict in South Sudan has set the world’s youngest country back a very considerable way. I did not get beyond Juba. On his visit, however, the Archbishop of Canterbury went to Bor, where he saw for himself the mass graves of those slaughtered in inter-community fighting. I was glad to learn from press reports that, in Addis last week, the President of South Sudan and Reik Machar agreed that they would work together, as I understand it, in a Government of national unity, which I hope will take South Sudan from now until the presidential elections next year. However, I do not think that any of us can in any way underestimate the potential humanitarian disaster just around the corner in South Sudan. I hope that the cessation of hostilities will enable food aid, as well as humanitarian international agencies and NGOs, to reach all parts of the country.

In Nigeria and other countries in Africa, we are seeing a rise of organisations such as Boko Haram and of Islamic extremism. The President of the Republic of Sudan is a wanted alleged international war criminal. There are still far too few countries in Africa where the transition of power from one democratically elected Government to another is the norm.

We need to take stock of the progress of the millennium development goals and agree what to put in their place post-2015. I understand that President Obama will convene in Washington in early August a summit to which all African Heads of Government are invited. That will allow the United States and African Heads of Government to have a significant dialogue on what the agenda for Africa should be.

The United States has increasingly found itself involved in peacekeeping in Africa—it has a very large military base in Djibouti—but, similarly, China is taking an ever-closer interest and wants more involvement and investment in Africa.

Lastly and significantly, we also need to secure a global agreement on climate change. We must never underestimate the potential of climate change seriously to damage the economies and people of Africa.