PM Tony Blair’s Prescription to Cure Africa

Rich governments pledge to repent from feeding dictators to feeding children. And, it’s about time!

A browse through my previous columns will reveal a tortured interest in the poor, hungry and chronically forsaken people of Africa. But despite my despair and feelings of helplessness, the temptation to give up hope has never entered my consciousness.

[Indeed, I find it contemptible that some rich people have fashioned a disease (compassion fatigue) to excuse their inhumanity towards suffering in Africa – unwittingly betraying their longing for a pill that might cure them of the haunting awareness of unconscionable misery that remains a fact of daily life in Africa.]

Nevertheless, with rejuvenated hope, I greeted last Friday’s announcement by UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, of the latest prescription to cure Africa’s seemingly terminal maladies. It remains to be seen, however, whether Africans will implement the medicinal recommendations delineated in this report or whether they will assert counter-indicated cultural and tribal customs as reasons to remain diseased, hungry and mired in poverty.

Beyond potential African intransigence, however, Blair’s cure faces a second opinion obstacle from the United States that could scuttle his treatment even before trials have begun. Because, the Americans have already dismissed Blair’s report as a Johnny-come-lately basket of ideas without any realistic chance of being implemented.

(Blair’s American naysayers cite the pledge President Bush made 3 years ago of $15 billion in targeted and conditional grants to African (and Caribbean) countries as the most sustainable method of rendering aid to the poor. In this case, for example, by making incremental grants from that amount conditional upon the successful implementation of protocols to treat HIV Aids and producing measurable results.)

…Blair hopes to comfort the afflicted

At any rate, the Blair report prescribes a two-pronged cure requiring pleas to rich countries for massive amounts of money on one hand and challenges to African governments to do a better job of combating corruption on the other. More specifically, these prongs entail, in part, the following remedial measures:

The Cancellation of 100% of foreign debt of the poorest African countries (Courtesy of the Moral Outrage tour by rock star Bono. It should be noted, however, that poor African countries are paying around $13 billion annually in interest on unconditional loans that Western governments gave directly to African dictators. Therefore, given their complicity in the squandering of those loans, Western governments should not only cancel these debt payments but should also reimburse African nations all of the money they paid pursuant to loan arrangements that these governments knew held no benefit for poor African people.)

More funding for prenatal health care and HIV Aids education and prevention (Unfortunately, this program faces daunting cultural and tribal taboos in many African countries.)

Funding of free primary schools (Along with hospitals and roads, this is one of the primary expenditures the report recommends.)

Funding for a rapid response force composed of multi-national African soldiers (To enforce peace agreements between African states and prevent human rights abuses by governments against their own people – as Robert Mugabe’s government is doing right now in Zimbabwe.)

Repatriation of ill-gotten gains by corrupt leaders (Seems a soul cleansing measure by Western governments that is tied, albeit indirectly, to the debt cancellation provision cited above.)

An end to Western arms sales to conflict zones (Perhaps reflecting a belated crisis of conscience among Western governments for sanctioning the sale of highly efficient killing machines to poor African countries. Back then, these governments were interested only in profit margins and showed little regard for the wholesale and indiscriminate killing of Africans that such sales enabled.)

Notwithstanding these potentially helpful remedies, however, the cure for what ails Africa remains rooted in the pandemic of corruption and poor governance throughout the continent. (see in Archives Big Dada – Curing the African Pathology) Indeed, it would be a damning and unforgivable tragedy if Western countries provide this unprecedented infusion of extra aid only to allow adept bureaucratic kleptomaniacs to have their way yet again. In addition, though, the complicity of multinational corporate bribers must be acknowledged and discontinued in order to fully transform the corrupt culture of doing business in Africa.

It has been long established that interventions to rehabilitate people caught in an addictive spirals of self-destruction must have the consent and willingness of the addicts to be cured. Therefore, despite its great intent to cure Africa’s pathologies, the success of Blair’s intervention is clearly dependent on the consent and willingness of Africans to implement his prescriptions. Because, even if Western governments honor the prong of his plan which calls for their financial support, unless the African people demand accountable and transparent governments, another generation of Africans will experience little in life besides hunger, rampant poverty and disease.

Unfortunately, the prognosis does not look good. Because, except for the relatively rich and well-governed South Africa, there are precious few African countries that seem amenable to the good governance reforms prescribed by the second prong of Blair’s cure. Moreover, given the South African leader’s refusal to accept the scientific evidence about the causes of HIV Aids, even its government cannot be relied upon to make sensible use of the billions of dollars targeted (by the Blair report as a priority) to fight this epidemic.

Finally, as past is often prologue, it may well be that in a few years the only positive thing to be said of Blair’s prescription for Africa will be – to paraphrase Alfred Tennyson – that it was better to have tried and failed than never to have tried (a cure) at all.

Good on you, Mr. Blair!

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