Africa – the scar Blair intends to heal

By David Cronin

Date: 30/06/05

Tony Blair calls Africa "a scar on the world's conscience". While this may be too reductive a tag for a continent stretching from Cairo to Cape Town, it is nonetheless true that Africa is the key battleground for realising the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of cutting poverty by 2015.

The UK prime minister has vowed to make Africa an overriding priority while Britain chairs both the EU and G8 in 2005. Transforming his rhetoric into tangible results will be a formidable task.

The first challenge comes next week at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland (6 July). The UK is pushing the other top industrialised nations to agree to major increases in aid to poor countries. A deal of some sort will probably be brokered, yet the "quantum leap" which Finance Minister Gordon Brown has said is necessary to reach the MDGs seems unlikely because of the marked reluctance from the US and Japan to accept proposals to use cash raised from issuing bonds on international capital markets to double the amount of aid.

Next, there is the reform of the sugar sector. EU farm ministers are slated to decide at their 18-19 July meeting if they will accept a blueprint for shaking up the Union's system of subsidising sugar beet-growing. A proposal to drastically reduce the guaranteed price of white sugar put forward by the European Commission has met staunch opposition from several EU countries with large numbers of jobs dependent on sugar. Yet such steep price cuts will also cause immense hardship for those African, Caribbean and Pacific states who rely heavily on sugar exports to Europe.

In September, Britain will be representing the Union at a UN summit in New York, where assessing what progress has been made on the MDGs will be a dominant topic.

The real test of the EU's will to make the world a fairer place will come in December, with the World Trade Organization's ministerial conference in Hong Kong.

For anti-poverty advocates, Blair has been pressing the right buttons on trade recently. He has recognised the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) as an impediment to reducing poverty in developing countries and a strain on the EU's budget. Many campaigners feel it is ironic that the annual amount which the Union spends on the CAP is similar to the €45 billion worth of debt relief for poor countries agreed by G8 finance ministers recently.

Blair will have his work cut out if he wants the EU to give a firm date for eliminating its subsidies for farm exports in Hong Kong. France, the principal beneficiary from these subsidies, is markedly reluctant to take such a step.

But a new report from Oxfam underscores that such subsidies will have to go to give farmers a chance to trade their way out of poverty. According to the relief agency, the EU currently exports sugar and beef at 44% and 56% of their normal value within the Union. The result is that farmers in poor countries cannot compete with lavishly subsidised imports.

Analysis feature on Tony Blair's vow to make Africa an overriding priority while Britain chairs both the EU and G8 in 2005. Author suggests that transforming the UK Prime Minister's rhetoric into tangible results would be a formidable task.