11 March 2005
The Prime Minister launched the Commission for Africa report at the British Museum in London.
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Commissioners, Mr President, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentleman.
There can be no excuse, no defence, no justification for the plight of millions of our fellow human beings in Africa today. There should be nothing that stands in the way of our changing it.
That is the simple message from the Commission for Africa report published today.
Africa can change for the better. The report shows how. The issue is: do we, together, in Africa and amongst the wealthy nations of our world, have the will? The moral reason is clear.
In a world of increasing prosperity and with more people sharing each year in this growing wealth, it is obscenity that should haunt our daily thoughts that four million children will die in Africa this year before their fifth birthday.
It’s little better that millions more of those children who do survive
disease and hunger will be denied even basic schooling and can look forward only to a life of abject poverty.This is the fundamental moral challenge of our generation.
A moral challenge to do it and a common interest to get it done.
For, as the report demonstrates, to tackle the instability, conflict and despair which disfigures too much of Africa and which can fuel extremism and violence, is to help build our own long-term peace and prosperity. It can be done.
The ambitions of Africa are not so different to anywhere else.
Parents in Africa want the same things as we all want for our children. To be healthy and safe. To make material progress, for the next generation to do better than the last one.
And change is possible. This continent of Europe has shown it, as it has reunified after years of war and dictatorship.
Forty years ago, Asia was the poorest continent on the planet - twice as poor as Africa. Today, it is the fastest growing continent on the planet and twice as rich as Africa.
The Commission for Africa report, launched today in London, in Africa’s capital in Addis Ababa and in New York where the UN is based, tells us how Africa too can change for good.
The report we have produced is different. It is blisteringly, sometimes painfully, honest.
We have told the truth about Africa. We have been frank about corruption and conflict.
But we are also frank in our criticisms of rich countries - about how they have failed to fulfil their promises on aid and trade.
However, the story of the report is not one of blame or gloom but of optimism.
Not everything in every part of Africa is bad. Democracy has new life. War has given way to peace in many countries. Economies with the right governance and help, make progress.
Of course there are still oppressive regimes and Sudan and DRC remind us conflict is still prevalent.
But there are also new possibilities sweeping across Africa. It is possible to imagine an Africa in 10 years time whose economy is growing as fast as Asia’s.
Where democracy is on the march into every corner. Where conflicts are being ended not begun. Where leaders are held properly to account.
And where millions of people worry less about where to get their next meal or clean water and more about fulfilling their hopes for the future.
All this is possible. Whether it happens, as this report demonstrates, is down to all of us.
It needs a new partnership: A partnership, between the developed world and the continent of Africa that goes beyond old donor/ recipient relations.
A partnership that puts primary responsibility on Africa itself to sort out its governance and conflict.
But also a partnership which requires us to support this change with more aid and better trade, with help in the face of famine, disease and poverty.
The report sets out a comprehensive plan of action.
This time we need a plan that includes concrete action on governance, conflict, health and education, the economy and international assistance - all together.
Finally, it is a report with a mission.
The report itself is only a first step - it is nothing if we don’t use it to achieve change. In it we propose a mechanism to monitor its implementation year by year.
Let us today pledge to make 2005 the year our eyes opened to the full reality of Africa: to the horror of its daily and preventable death-toll; to the grinding misery of too many millions of its people, to the hope that together we can change it.
I fear my own conscience on Africa. I fear the judgement of future generations, where history properly calculates the gravity of the suffering. I fear them asking: but how could wealthy people, so aware of such suffering, so capable of acting, simply turn away to busy themselves with other things? What greater call to action could there be? Did they really know and yet do nothing? I feel that judgement of the future alongside the now. It gives me urgency. It fills me with determination.
I will be asking world leaders, at the G8 Summit in Gleneagles in July, in Europe, at the UN Summit in September and at the WTO in Hong Kong in December, to back this comprehensive report with action.
I will also be asking them to listen to all our citizens. Millions across the world are now campaigning to Make Poverty History. Millions in the UK today will support Comic Relief.
They are demanding that we act for Africa.
Success is in our hands. If we resolve to act, we will succeed.
If we fail to act, we will betray the future not just of hundreds of millions of children in Africa but that of our own children as well.
It is unthinkable that we should do so.
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