London | Wednesday
THE international community now has ”the best chance in a generation” to relieve African poverty, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said as he prepared on Wednesday to set off on a trip to west Africa.
Blair warned in an interview with The Times daily that neglect of failing states by the developed world ran the risk of repeating the situation in Afghanistan, producing terrorism and drugs problems for the West.
Blair, who has promised to make Africa the foreign policy priority of his second term in office, will begin his visit on Wednesday in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country.
Over the next four days, he will make further stops in Ghana, Senegal and Sierra Leone.
Blair told The Times: ”We have got a duty to act. We can act.
”The reason I’m so passionate about this is that I think we have got the best chance in a generation to make a difference.”
At last October’s annual conference of his ruling Labour Party, Blair described the state of Africa as ”a scar on the conscience of the world”.
In other African economic news – according to the results of new study – the continent’s economic growth will be at least two percentage points higher than in rich industrialised nations, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) announced on Tuesday.
The joint report by the OECD and the African Development Bank (ADB), released on the heels of the World Economic Forum in New York, provides a snapshot of 22 African economies and a tool for policy makers and investors with interests in the continent.
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, speaking at a press conference to launch the report, said foreign investment in Africa was key to ”reintegrating the continent into the world economy.”
The head of the OECD’s development office, Jorge Braga de Macedo, said the report underlined the continent’s economic diversity.
”Investors often look at Africa simply as a whole, and that’s what must be changed,” he said.
The report emphasised the ”fact that African countries are very diverse, even within regions, and continental averages can be misleading.”
In South Africa, the economic engine of the continent, growth expectation for 2002 is pegged at 3,1%, up from 2,9% in 2001.
In Ghana, economic growth last year was expected to hit 5,8%, and would be maintained at 5,3% in 2002, the report said.
But in Zimbabwe, where inflation and unemployment have soared amid a worsening political crisis, growth sharply declined in 2000 to minus 5,5%, and then dipped to minus 6,6% in 2001.
”In 2002, political developments will largely determine economic performance” in Zimbabwe, it said.
The study found that ”while many African countries have failed to capitalise on the benefits of globalisation, some have succeeded in doing so thanks to policies which may be applicable elsewhere in the continent.”
The study said half of those countries surveyed had a budgetary surplus in terms of primary balance.
The report said Africa’s growth rate as a whole would nonetheless slow slightly in 2002, falling to an expected 3,2% as against 3,4% last year. – AFP, Sapa