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Democratic Republic of the Congo

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Judy Mallaber) on securing the debate. I had the good fortune to travel with her in July to the DRC to observe the first round of the presidential election and the National Assembly elections. It is hard to overstate the importance of the DRC to Africa’s development. I think that, geographically, it is the second biggest country in Africa; it is certainly huge. It is situated at the heart of Africa, has a population of 60 million people and is strategically important: it is surrounded by eight other countries, and the conflict in the past decade in the DRC spilled over into many of them. Its neighbours’ borders stretch to the Red sea in the case of Sudan, to the Indian ocean in the case of Tanzania and to the Atlantic ocean in the case of Congo-Brazzaville and Angola—although, of course, the DRC has a very short Atlantic coastline all of its own. The DRC is mineral rich, but it has virtually no infrastructure—no roads. It has poor schools, and few schools in rural areas. It has poor health services. It suffered 40 years of corrupt kleptocratic government and a decade of conflict, which, as my hon. Friend reminded us, cost 4 million lives. The UK has been right to take the initiative of making the DRC a key partner for development assistance, despite the fact that we do not have historical links with the DRC. Despite Henry Morton Stanley’s exploration, we have not, as a colonial power, had the historical relationship with the DRC that we have with many other parts of Africa. Our Government are right to concentrate on peace building and the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of the former fighters from the conflict, because without peace there can be no progress on democracy or development. The UK has invested heavily in supporting institutions necessary for effective governance. We have supported the transitional Parliament, for instance. When the Select Committee on International Development visited the DRC in May of last year, the speaker of the National Assembly, Monsieur Luhaka, paid a comprehensive tribute to the UK and thanked the UK for helping the transitional Assembly to draft a new constitution and to work effectively. That was a challenge, because none of its members had ever been in a Parliament or an elected institution in their lives—not that they were elected; they were appointed to the transitional assembly. The big difference and change that the elections brought was just that—people were elected. The UK is a major donor, a major development assistance partner, for the DRC. The latest DFID statistics, which record bilateral aid for 2004, show that the DRC was our second largest recipient of aid in that year, mainly because of large debt write-offs by the UK. Last year, we contributed £63 million. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley, I pay tribute to our ambassador to the DRC, Andy Sparkes, and to Phil Marker, the head of the DFID office there. We talk in London about the assistance that we give to countries that are on the path from dictatorship to democracy and going through the process of economic development, but the work on the ground is done by very small teams of Brits, who work often in very difficult circumstances—the ambassador showed me a bullet hole in the wall of his residence. The difference that those people make to the quality of life for people in the countries where they work is enormous, and we owe them a debt of thanks. The elections were a huge logistical achievement. About $500 million in foreign aid went into organising them, registering voters—which was a major UK exercise and achievement—training election observers and so on, although the greatest congratulations should of course go to the Congolese people, who did not have a tradition of elections. The elections last year were the first multi-party elections that they had had for 40 years, yet they rose to the occasion. They knew what was required of them; they did it, and they successfully elected a president, National Assembly and regional government. That is a huge achievement, helped by aid from donor countries, but we must not rest on our laurels and allow the DRC to slide back into chaos and conflict, not only because that would be a huge waste of the money and resources that we have put in over recent years, but because it would condemn 60 million people to a life that, frankly, is hardly worth living and that we, as fellow human beings, should not tolerate. The Congo’s future, however, does not depend on aid alone. Fundamentally, it depends on the leadership of the Congolese people and the contribution of the people themselves. Economically, it depends on the growing of a private sector. A viable economy in the Congo will never be created through aid, but if livelihoods are successfully to be provided for the ordinary people—the mass of the people, the poor of the Congo—business has to break with the traditions of the past. It must not be corrupt and must operate transparently. The extractive industries and the forestry industry have to operate in environmentally sensitive ways.