---

Africa: Governance and Law

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, on securing the debate and thank him for introducing it with the wisdom and concern that we have come to expect of him. Although the subject of the debate is Africa, all noble Lords but two have concentrated on sub-Saharan Africa, as I, too, shall do in my nine-minute presentation. Sub-Saharan Africa includes 48 countries and 920 million people. Of the 48 countries, 23 are authoritarian, 12 are democracies and 13 are hybrids. The 12 democracies have different degrees of stability and maturity. Apart from four of them, we cannot say that democracy is firmly entrenched, because one or two elections do not by themselves prove that the institutions are there to stay. Africa presents a mixed picture. On the negative side, as I have just said, democracy has not taken root in more than half a dozen countries. Two-fifths of the population live on less than one US dollar per day. Seventy-five per cent of HIV/AIDS victims in the world are from Africa. Ninety per cent of malaria-related deaths in the world at large occur in Africa. And a continent with 12 per cent of the world’s population has no more than 1 per cent of global GDP. It is also a continent which, happily, unlike Asia, does not have dynastic rule but has long periods of personalised rule. Omar Bongo in Gabon went on for 40 years; our good old friend Mobutu Sese Seko went on for 32 years; and I could mention many more, including Mugabe, who has been going for 25 years. That is the negative side of the total picture, but there is much good happening, too, which is encouraging. There is a strong desire for democracy. Some of the latest public opinion poll surveys that I have seen show that 87 per cent of the African population is very keen on some form of democracy, and 70 per cent is totally opposed to any kind of personalised rule. Average growth in Africa has been at the rate of 5.8 per cent; low rates of inflation have helped; and external debt relief has released money for social expenditure. Civil war has ended in some parts of Africa such as Liberia and Sierra Leone, and there are also some remarkable success stories such as South Africa, Mozambique and Botswana. Botswana is particularly interesting. Its GDP has risen one hundredfold since independence. It is the fastest growing economy in Africa. It is non-racial. Sensibly it did a deal with De Beers on its diamonds and used the royalties well. To its credit, it broke with the Washington consensus, which helped it enormously. It set up state-owned companies, nationalised mineral rights, steered the economy to six-year development plans and it is what one academic called "a free market economy that does everything by planning". Economic development is obviously important but not enough. We need to ensure that its fruits are evenly distributed and that it does not lead to plutocracy. Given that the picture is balanced at one level but has dark signs on the other, what are the sources of Africa’s problems? Can we do something about them? Some problems are a result of factors beyond its control, such as the global food crisis, climate change, external interference in various parts of Africa, and so on. Others are its own creation, such as weak state institutions, extensive centralisation, for which it need not have opted but did so, overly personalised rule and institutionalised corruption. There is constant violent conflict and tribalism that have led to a brain drain, the dismantling of infrastructure, constant plundering of natural resources and little climate in which foreign direct investment can flow. In that context, what are we capable of doing? I have three or four suggestions on what we might do. First, in this kind of mixed situation there is constantly a danger of wanting to return to the 19th century kind of scramble for Africa in terms of energy resources, arms’ sales in Tanzania or energy contracts in Nigeria and Angola. That temptation must be resisted. Secondly, we should stop thinking in terms of China as our competitor or try to recreate conditions for some kind of cold war with China. China is welcome in that part of the world for obvious reasons; it does not have the legacy of European imperialism or the way in which Europeans divided up different parts of Africa and left it in a mess. China does not suffer from that handicap, although it has its own handicaps because of its ideology and lack of familiarity with the African tradition. I was very interested in the internal debate in the Chinese Communist Party on its strategy in relation to Africa and developing countries in general. China rightly decided that it would stay away from political activities in the country—not favouring this candidate or that. It would not intervene for political or humanitarian reasons but would concentrate on building infrastructure and agriculture. Although that strategy has something to say for itself, it also has disadvantages. For example, we cannot expect China to help us out in the Sudan. But we must not at any cost enter into any cold war rivalry with China. It can be our partner; we can work with it; engage in dialogue and work out patterns of co-operation. Thirdly, we need to develop new forms of aid partnership—the sort of thing initiated by Clare Short, and proposed by Tony Blair, such as aid related to projects. Something that I have been emphasising in relation to India and other countries is the idea of encouraging the diaspora to return. They will not return for good as they will have struck roots in other parts of the world, but nevertheless some kind of scheme could be devised such that they can go there periodically and co-operate in the construction of the country. It is also important to train African manpower and most important of all, as Botswana has shown, not to insist on a single model of economic development. My last suggestion is of a more general nature. There is a tendency to think that Africa has a crisis of democracy, bad governance, and that somehow we can "export" good governance and democracy to it. The language of "exporting" democracy smacks of arrogance. It implies that Africa does not have its own traditions of consultation on which to build and which we can creatively adapt to modern times. It also implies that we have somehow perfected good governance and democracy. We have not. The catastrophic mess in which we are in shows that good governance of the economy is not our strong point. The way in which we panicked after 7/7 and 9/11 and imposed all sorts of drastic restrictions on civil liberties shows how easily good governance can be sacrificed in a moment of panic. We should remember that African countries live with 7/7 and 9/11 daily on a smaller scale. It is remarkable and striking that some of them have not succumbed to the kind of panic that we have. It is also striking that in our own country some of our brilliant scientists at our great universities have suffered at the hands of animal right activists, or what I call animal rights terrorists. Professor Colin Blakemore at the University of Oxford courageously stood up to them and paid both a visible and invisible price. Let us approach Africa as we do other parts of the world, in a spirit of global solidarity, equality and humility, and let us appreciate that just as we have a good deal to teach African countries we might have something to learn from those that have managed to maintain a climate of civility and liberty despite suffering daily acts of terrorism.