DEVELOPMENT-AFRICA: Britain Once a Coloniser – Now a Saviour?

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Joyce Mulama

NAIROBI, Jan 14 2005 (IPS) - Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, paid a lightning visit to Kenya, Wednesday – this at the start of a week-long tour of Africa that is aimed at garnering support for efforts to fight poverty on the continent.

Appropriately, he spent part of his five-hour stay in Kenya visiting Kibera, a slum in the capital, Nairobi.

Said to be Africa’s largest informal settlement, Kibera encapsulates the extent of under-development in Africa. Piles of rubbish surround shacks that house the hundreds of thousands who live in the slum. A lack of sanitation facilities means that many in Kibera are at constant risk of contracting diseases.

If the chancellor has his way, however, this could change: Britain is backing a plan that incorporates a number of initiatives to address poverty in Africa.

These include having the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and African Development Bank cancel debts of poor countries.

“We want to have a hundred percent multilateral debt relief for those countries that are HIPC, but we have additional proposals for countries that are not HIPC,” Brown told journalists in Nairobi.

HIPC, the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative, was launched by the IMF and World Bank in 1996, to reduce the debt burden of developing nations. HIPC came in recognition of the fact that many poor countries had reached a stage where their social and economic progress was held being hostage to loan repayments.

At present about 40 states, three-quarters of them from Africa, are attempting to reduce their debts under HIPC.

Britain’s plan also provides for a new “International Finance Facility” (IFF) that could see aid to Africa double from its present level of 50 billion dollars – this through using funding from wealthy nations to raise money in financial markets.

For the next decade, ten billion dollars a year would be spent on improving the school system in Africa. While in Kibera, Brown visited the Olympic Primary School to find out more about Kenya’s policy of free primary education – introduced by President Mwai Kibaki after he came to power at the end of 2002.

In addition, Britain is calling for the trade barriers that keep farmers in Africa from competing with their counterparts in rich countries to be dismantled.

“I believe the level of support that is growing for these proposals not only shows that it can be done, but also that it can be done quickly so that we have a chance to meet the millennium development targets,” Brown noted.

This was in reference to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eight targets that were agreed on by global leaders at the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000.

The MDGs are aimed at helping poor countries address some of their most pressing developmental needs by 2015. The goals include achieving universal primary education by this date, halving the number of people who live on less than a dollar a day – and reducing maternal mortality rates by three quarters.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said that he will use his country’s presidency of the Group of Eight (G8) nations this year to promote the debt relief and aid initiatives – often said to constitute a new Marshall Plan for Africa.

The original Marshall plan was the main U.S. initiative for funding European reconstruction after World War Two II. Named after former American Secretary of State George Marshall, the plan provided 13 billion dollars in aid for 16 countries – a sum equivalent to 100 billion dollars at current rates.

The G8 comprises the world’s leading industrialised states: the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia.

London will also push for more aid to Africa when it assumes the rotating presidency of the European Union on Jul. 1.

Last year, Blair set up a Commission for Africa to determine the best ways of helping African countries emerge from the poverty and corruption that have often grown steadily worse over the past few decades.

But while many have welcomed London’s initiatives, others are more cautious – citing fears that debt forgiveness might come with too many strings attached.

“This smells of hidden conditionalities that may be unfriendly to the affected countries,” Edward Oyugi, a development consultant based in Nairobi, told IPS.

In addition, certain activists are concerned that African nations which are freed of loan repayments may simply be plunged into a new cycle of debt if the IFF is successfully established – and able to issue further loans.

While in Kenya, Brown also planted a tree with Deputy Environment Minister Wangari Maathai, the winner of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Maathai’s Green Belt Movement, established in 1977, has planted more than 10 million trees in Kenya to prevent deforestation and soil erosion in the country.

Brown later flew to neighbouring Tanzania, where he reportedly met villagers near the capital, Dar-es-Salaam, to discuss their water and sanitation needs.

The chancellor will travel to Mozambique on Friday, and South Africa on Sunday, where he will wrap up his visit to the continent.