The United Kingdom recognised that trade was much more important than aid to Africa and the disappointment of the recent Cancun trade talks should not discourage the pursuit of a fairer global trading system, Minister for Africa at the Foreign And Commonwealth Office Chris Mullin said on Monday.
Addressing a meeting at the Centre for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town, Mullin, however, said the UK was committing one billion pounds a year in development assistance to Africa by 2005 and this would be used in the countries that needed it most.
“We will focus development assistance on the areas that can best reduce poverty — health, education and building accountable and effective governments.”
Turning to trade he said: “We will build on alliances with developing countries, including South Africa, to get the Doha development agenda back on track. We will not continue to tolerate a situation in which a cow in Europe is subsidised at $2 a day … twice the amount that half of all Africans live on.
“With our support, the European Union has made substantial reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy which when implemented will cut damaging European subsidies and open European markets. We want to go further.”
“We will continue to use our influence to ensure that the developed world is prepared to give Africa a fairer chance. We are leading the effort to provide debt relief for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries.”
This, he said, was releasing up to $41,2-billion for the 20 countries in Africa that were participating.
The UK had also proposed — with South Africa’s support — an International Financing Facility, including debt relief, that should lead to the release of up to $50-billion of development assistance in a reasonably short time, making the millennium development goals — aimed to cut poverty — more achieveable.
Noting that South Africa and the UK enjoyed six-billion pounds sterling in bilateral trade each year, he said he was happy to announce that South Africa and Britain would “in the next few days conduct a bilateral command and control exercise in South Africa – Exercise African Shield.”
British and South African military and civilian personnel would share experience and techniques in regional peacekeeping, he noted. – I-Net Bridge