June 2nd, 2007
From Economist.com
Tony Blair has been good for Africa. Africa has been good for him
“A SCAR on the conscience of the world” is how Tony Blair, Britain’s departing prime minister, once described Africa. In an attempt, perhaps, to remind people that there is more to his legacy than Iraq, this week he returned to the continent that has given him some of his greatest foreign-policy successes. Mr Blair can certainly claim that he has done more than any other leader to make the world aware of that scar. But doing somehting about it has proved trickier. For Mr Blair’s relationship with Africa has been one of vaulting ambition, dashed hopes and modest success.
The three countries that he dropped in on before returning to Britain on Friday June 1st are richly illustrative. Sierra Leone is where his African adventure began in 2000 with a British military intervention to restore the elected president, Ahmad Kabbah, to power after a rebellion. A former British colony, Sierra Leone was a classic failed African state: years of civil war fuelled by “blood diamonds” had ripped the country apart. But Britain’s successful military strike, combined with dollops of post-conflict aid to rebuild the country, showed Mr Blair that Africa was an arena where Britain, with its strong historical ties to the continent, could make an impact.
Today Sierra Leone is visibly a better place. In the streets of its capital, Freetown, Mr Blair was greeted almost like a returning messiah; once he must have hoped for something similar in Baghdad. Sierra Leone showed Mr Blair how he could fuse his evangelising morality with practical politics. He began to argue that the rich world now had the means to cure poverty and disease, if only it could find the will.
But Mr Blair also went to South Africa, where the limits of his power have been starkly revealed. Despite his supposedly close relationship with Thabo Mbeki, its president, Mr Blair has failed to convince him to take a tougher stand against Robert Mugabe, the president of another former colony gone disastrously wrong, Zimbabwe. Appeals to human rights and democracy have fallen on deaf ears; Zimbabwe’s neighbours have preferred the solidarity of the liberation struggle against what they still tout as white imperialism.
Zimbabwe is one case where Mr Blair’s brand of easy Western morality has come up short against the realities of African big-man politics. Sudan is another, though it has not been a total failure for the West. America and Britain did force the Sudanese government to sign a peace agreement with its rebellious south in 2004. But the Sudanese have run rings around both for years over getting a UN force into the Darfur region to stop a murderous government counter-insurgency campaign that has so far cost the lives of about 300,000 people.
Mr Blair also invested too much in leaders who he hoped would lead an “African renaissance” but turned out to be more old school than Blairite. If he had left office a couple of years ago, his farewell safari might well have included Ethiopia. Meles Zenawi, the country’s president, was the most prominent African member of Mr Blair’s Commission for Africa but he repaid the compliment by allowing his police to shoot scores of protesters dead and arrest hundreds more in the wake of flawed elections in 2005. So now it is back to the old game of figuring out how to help people whose leaders are mainly interested in helping themselves.
Although African politics have proved messier than Mr Blair must have hoped, his famous charm nonetheless worked on some of its leaders. His tour began in Libya, where he led the way in persuading President Muammar Qaddafi to give up his nuclear programme in exchange for the resumption of ties with the West. And if all the “scaling up” of aid agreed at G8 summits does eventually help to reduce poverty and disease on the continent, Mr Blair’s African legacy might yet turn out to have been important.
At the least Mr Blair can be sure that Africa was good for his government. New Labour’s technocratic approach at home never satisfied the old yearning to build a New Jerusalem that lurks in the breast of every Labour activist. Africa gave them a “great cause” to rally round, and helped Mr Blair through some of his worst patches over Iraq. Furthermore, scaling up and debt relief are among the few issues on which Mr Blair and his successor, Gordon Brown, are in absolute harmony. So as Mr Blair goes, expect more of the same from the new government on Africa.
5 thoughts on “Blair in Africa”
I used to read the Economist while I was in Ethiopia for three years, and I enjoyed its objective analysis on the events of the hot spots of our troubled world. I must confess, I was quite disappointed that the Economist was quite or indifferent to the human rights abuse that gripped Ethiopia after the 2005 election. I have comet to realize in the last so many months, particularly after Meles’ adventure in Somalia, the true nature of the dictatorial regiem of Meles is being reflected in your articles.
Thank you
Tsehayou
Mr Blair may well have avoided a public show of support to Meles since the pitiful conclusion of 2005 elections in Ethiopia. Nonetheless, I very much doubt he has given up hoping on Meles Zenawi as a modern African statesman capable of leading Ethiopia out of abject poverty. Meles is proving his doubters and critics wrong both at home and abroad as he continues to register measureable economic achievements. There are visible affirmative changes in education, road construction, housing, and communication among other sectors of the economy. Agricultural production and the volume of the exports have shown sizable increases .
This is being acknowledged by those who provide assistance to the country. The World Bank and IMF, the EU and the African Development Banks all seem happy with the direction and strides Meles’ government is taking.
Everyone agrees on where Meles’ falls short in transforming the country . And that is human rights and democracy. He clearly fails the test there. That needs addressing without delay. But it’s hard to expect his government to change by external and internal pressure as a major instrument. This government should rather be persuaded and supported to take the right steps to ensure human rights and political freedom.
Pressure and force can only further antagonise and alienate the government. One just has to look around the globe to see that.
The Ethiopian government, Meles has proved to be the worst kind of a self interest bloodsucker much earlier to the Ethiopians and most recently to the West. He is a true example of how a country can never develop without a strict consideration for good governance. Any development in his country traces to his bank account. Tony Blair’s ambitious plan for Africa was very positive and can be achieved if it fully integrated the real people instead of their terrorist who is governing them by force. Tolerance of such a totalitarian regime should not be acceptable anywhere in the world, especially in Africa if the real goal is to develop Africa. As the economist put it, that seems to be the problem in most of Africa. Now, that the problem is identified, I am hopeful that the solution is near.
What economic development are you talking about elias? Unless you talking about the multi-billion business empires of TPLF, the majority of the people are dying of hunger and HIV/AIDS on a daily basis.
I used to know someone from the World Bank who used to say “the statistics is getting richer, but the people are getting poorer”, as the government’s media lies to the public about the invisible development. The media is solely used by the government to exercise the monopoly of being right.
There is no development without democracy. Mr Zenawi is a despotic ruler who hangs on power by terrorizing the people. His true colour has out in the open when he committed day light robbery of the election and ordered the massacre of 193 people including children and elderly in 2005 (for those who doubted about his true nature).
Whatever money the developed world gives to Ethiopia ends up back in the bank accounts of western countries. Definitely the ruling elite have become extremely rich in a very short period of time embezling the country’s wealth similar to some other African Leaders. But please don’t talk about any development in any sense because people know better about their life than anyone else as they live it daily.
I wouldn’t like to disagree with anyone who has suspicions of embezzlement of public coffers by government office holders. Nonetheless , what I wouldn’t go as far as saying is that I am confident so and so is syphoning off state funds into a secure personal bank account somewhere.Because that would be ridiculuos if I can’t prove it.
Another observation I’d like to make is people should’t just go about thrashing the government and its decalred achievements. They should have the wit and the courage to challenge it with reasoning.
There’s no point fluffing about how people’s lives aren’t changing for the better. It’s too absurd to expect any visible sign of improvement in the day to day lives of a country whose citizens live in complete squalid poverty.
If you want to witness visible positive changes in the lives of those you know back there, you have to let development efforts to continue uninterrupted over at least five decades by my own humble estimates.
A great deal could be achieved if only the make or break approach by those opposing the government by force stopped.
Ethiopia needs the constructive engagement of all its children and friends. Rally round your country’s aspiration for development. Criticise where criticism is due but acknowledge achivements regardless of who achieved them. In the end, what matters is the end result, as I am sure you won’t disagree.