How Africa Can Succeed, By Jack Straw

United Kingdom’s Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, Right Honourable Jack Straw has listed ten conditions, which he urged African countries to confront if they must succeed.

Delivering the 10th Annual Murtala Muhammed Memorial Lecture yesterday in Abuja entitled, ‘Africa A New Agenda’, Straw named the conditions to include poverty reduction and development, governance, peace and security, conflicts, terrorism, migration, crime and drug. Others are energy security, environment, Islam and China Straw, who is also a member of British Parliament traced the present predicament of most African countries to miss governance and expressed optimism that,”If Africa pursues the right policies, tackles the right issues and gets the full support of the international community, this continent could be the success story of the 21st Century”. He regretted that poverty in Africa is getting worse, not better and that, “Unless growth accelerates and the fruits of growth are distributed more widely, by 2015 around 100 million more Africans than now will be living below the dollar-a-day poverty line”. Straw also regretted that Africa has unfortunately failed to take advantage of the globalization trend as the world economy becomes ever more competitive, resulting in the continent risking increasing marginalisation.

The result according to him is that, ”Straw said the good news from the African continent however, is that in recent years, Africa and its leaders have been taking responsibility for their own fate, noting that, Africa governments are now espousing the right policies , good governance, the market, peace-building, regional cooperation, and they are having some success.”

Straw also observed that Africa is emerging on the world stage as
international players, noting that,”Africa rightly aspires to play that
role, and seeks greater African membership on the UN Security Council, an aim UK strongly supports, not least since some 70 per cent of the Security Council’s business now concerns Africa.” He said ending poverty through successful, sustainable development should be at the heart of Africa’s agenda over the coming decade as it is with the UK, noting that this informed Prime Minister Tony Blair’s decision to make 2005 the year of Africa during his presidency of the G8 group of industrialized powers and the European Union. He commended Nigeria and some other African countries for making progress on governance in the last few years, stating that the international community has a role to play here. Straw announced that the UK last week, February 9, ratified the UN Convention on Corruption, which will help the country seize illicit and stolen assets and return such assets more quickly to their countries of origin. He assures that Britain was committed to returning to Nigeria assets stolen from the country in accordance with the UK law.

On Islam, the Foreign Secretary observed that one of the greatest challenges for Africa and indeed the whole world was ensuring that the Christians and the Islamic worlds become partners in the 21st Century rather than enemies, noting that, ‘Nowhere is this more important than in Africa.’ On China, the Prime Minister acknowledged Chinese’s increasing presence and influence in the African continent, particularly in the area of energy, construction, commerce etc. He said what matters to the West is not the fact of China’s engagements in Africa, but that such engagement should ‘support the agenda, which President Obasanjo and the African Union have set for this continent: support for democratic and accountable governance, for transparent business processes, for economic growth and effective poverty reduction for human rights and the rule of law’. In his remarks at the occasion, President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Murtala Muhammed Foundation observed that if there is no good governance it will be difficult to achieve real development, noting that ‘governance that does not lead to development will be sterile.’. He stated that while good governance constitutes internal state issue in Africa, development involves African development partners. The President commended the role of the UK in Nigeria’s debt relief from the Paris Club, stating that, ‘If we had not had the strong support of the UK government we would not have had the debt relief.’ He said without debt relief the pace of the nation’s development would have been hampered. The President also applauded the UK for signing the UN Convention on Corruption and stated that with this development Nigeria would expect some return of stolen funds from the UK. Recalling the era of the late Murtala Muhammed, Obasanjo revealed that what made the regime unique was that they worked with total trust, loyalty and commitment to the country. What have been driving us is our love and commitment to our father land, Obasanjo said. The President noted that in 1976 when Murtala was in office Nigeria ranked 28 among the countries with the highest GDP, but regretted that subsequent regimes before the present administration dragged the country to the 158th position. In the past, we have gone up and gone down, now we are determined to go up and continue to go up, Obasanjo assured.