Speech
Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for International Development
G8 Business Action for Africa Conference
6 July 2005
Helping to understand Africa
Mark Moody-Stuart, distinguished guests, Ministers, business leaders; friends:
Thank you very much for the invitation to be here today, on the eve of Gleneagles, this historic opportunity to make a lasting difference to the 315 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who have no choice but to live in extreme poverty. To the daily struggle of the 250 million people who are without safe water and proper sanitation. To the memory of the 6 million men, women and children who died needlessly last year of treatable diseases like AIDS, TB and malaria.
We cannot claim anymore that we do not know what is happening. And we have the means to change things.
Last weekend, over 200,000 people marched in Edinburgh. A band of hope that encircled the castle. Billions of people worldwide watched Live 8.
I can never remember a time when Africa, poverty, its causes, and what we can do about it, were right at the centre of our lives and our politics.
People want change. But how can we turn all the anger, compassion and concern we feel into supporting people in changing their own lives for the better?
Well it seems to me that our first task is to help more people to understand Africa.
To see Africa in all its glorious complexity. Its problems, yes, but also its potential. Its conflicts, yes, but also its creativity. Its diseases, yes, but also its dynamism. A continent, yes, but 54 individual countries.
To hear the stories of those who are doing business and doing it successfully. To speak of economic successes across the continent which are now reducing poverty and improving the lives of millions. To listen to African leadership which is spreading democracy and good governance.
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Business Action for Africa
And that is why I welcome so much the initiative that Business Action for Africa has taken in bringing us together. You’ve built it on the work of the Commission for Africa. And I’d like to thank William Kalema, one of my fellow Commissioners, here today, who has been tireless in his efforts in support of business in Africa.
You’ve worked together, drawing on discussions with several hundred businesses across Africa and the G8, to develop a comprehensive plan that can help raise growth rates across the continent to 7 per cent per year – the levels urgently needed if Africa is to have any hope of meeting the Millennium Development Goals.
And at its heart is a very simple idea. We can do good by doing good business. It’s a message that needs to be heard more loudly.
That unleashing Africa’s entrepreneurial potential - from its family farms and small firms to its larger companies - will improve lives by creating the jobs and economic opportunity that will lift people out of poverty – but with an effective state as a vital partner.
If anyone doubts that, look at China and India. Look at our own history as a country.
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How will Africa unleash its potential?
So how do will Africa do it? What needs to happen? Well, Africa’s experience, your experience, teaches us that we need the right conditions in place.
First, we need an end to conflict. War kills development as well as killing people. It destroys infrastructure and services, spreads disease, and stops people investing. The private sector also benefits from stability - but it must play its part by avoiding practices that fuel corruption or conflict.
Development and good governance and restricting access to the tools of war - weapons and financing - will also help. And if conflict does break out, the African Union with international support is playing an increasingly important role in trying to deal with it.
Second – and the foundation for everything that follows – is good governance. As the Commission for Africa said. The Africa Peer Review Mechanism - and I wholeheartedly commend the leaders of Ghana and Rwanda for their response to these reports - shows a new openness and willingness to confront the weaknesses of the past. We should get behind it – and the implementation of the plans of action.
Business must play its part too in enhancing accountability. The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative is a good example of how governments, business and civil society can work together to ensure that money raised from natural resource exploitation is used for the good of all and for long-term development.
10 countries are now implementing EITI, five are in Africa. A further 10 have committed to implement, and 8 of these are in Africa. We are seeing a fundamental shift in Africa’s attitude to transparency and accountability. This shift needs to occur here as well, with all of us taking responsibility for rooting out corruption – from the bribe givers to bribe takers.
Third, we need to get children into school and improve health care, so that all women and men can develop their full potential. Tackling the scourge of HIV and AIDS, with its devastating impact on society, economy and business.
Fourth, is doing something about the fundamental constraints to growth. Improving infrastructure that currently adds enormously to the risks and costs of doing business, limits rural and urban development, and undermines trade and regional integration.
Getting the domestic investment climate right – making Africa an even better place to do business. And, just as important – promoting agriculture, small enterprise and employment – particularly for women and young people.
Fifth, is helping Africa as it builds its capacity to trade. Action to remove internal barriers. Improving Africa’s access to world markets. Moves to end once and for all the indefensible subsidies and support provided to rich country producers, which deny to African countries perhaps the single most important means at their disposal to transform their lives.
And sixth is providing resources for growth.
A doubling of aid, front-loaded to fund the investments needed in infrastructure, trade capacity and human development. In Europe we have made an unprecedented commitment to double our aid levels, including to Africa by 2010. And I welcome commitments by the US, Canada and Japan to do the same.
We have also agreed up to $55 billion of multilateral debt relief, plus the biggest ever debt deal for one country, Nigeria, so that countries no longer pay out more in debt service payments than they do on providing health and education.
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Developing Africa's economies
But, important though these are in the long-term, Africa should raise its own resources for development by developing its economies. That’s how we did it; and Africa wants the same opportunity.
These are the priorities. This is what business, civil society and African governments have said is needed. Success will depend on each of us playing our full part.
As a politician, I know that in the end, this is about the choices we make. And it is politics - it is the political process which determines these choices. That’s why the G8 meeting at Gleneagles which starts today, the UN Millennium Review Summit in September, and the WTO ministerial in Hong Kong, all matter so much.
Over the past 2 days many of you have said you want to do more to help Africa. To stand up and be counted in effort to promote a more balanced view of Africa, that better reflects the positive outlook that so many of you have identified. To contribute to a change in the way businesses do business.
At the same time, we need to do more to work with you in creating the conditions for sustainable growth and enterprise.
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What DFID is doing
And my own department, the Department for International Development, stands ready to meet this challenge. I can tell you today what we will be doing.
First – I attach high priority to improving the investment climate in Africa. We are already supporting a wide variety of investment climate reform programmes across the continent, many of them in conjunction with other bilateral and multilateral donors.
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The Investment Climate Facility for Africa (ICF)
One of the exciting new initiatives in this area is the AU-NEPAD Investment Climate Facility for Africa (the ‘ICF’), which I know has been strongly endorsed here at your conference over the last two days, as well as at a number of other major business consultation events over the last year in Africa and elsewhere. The Commission for Africa recommended support for the ICF. And DFID has been assisting with the development of this new private-public facility too.
There is much that the ICF can do - by way of follow-up to the APRM process. By helping to reduce the costs and risks of doing business in Africa, we believe the ICF can make a real difference to investment levels and growth prospects on the continent.
We recognise African ownership of the ICF. And we recognise the influential role that the private sector is being given - in helping to fund and manage the Facility.
I am therefore pleased to confirm to you today that I intend to help fund the ICF during its initial three years phase. I hope that this signal will encourage those other donors and companies that have been giving serious thought to their support for it in recent weeks to now make commitments too. I hope the ICF will be able to begin its work soon.
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The Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund
Second – to support enterprise development and economic growth across the region, I can announce the launch of the Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund.
This Challenge Fund is expected to result in over £100m of new private sector spending and investment in Africa - in other words every one pound of public money would be matched by two pounds of private money.
The Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund will extend access to financial services that are vital for economic growth and poverty reduction, addressing the extremely high levels of financial exclusion in Africa.
The Challenge Fund will also promote partnerships between large and small companies that are needed to open up new markets to small African enterprises, and transfer essential production, management and marketing skills to them.
I hope you will see both of these steps as a clear indication of my commitment to working in partnership with the private sector, to strengthening this relationship, to support Business Action for Africa.
We recognise that it is only together – business and government – that we can make the progress that we need to.
We have the opportunity and moral obligation to stand together.
We are the generation on whom the moral and practical responsibility to act has fallen. And now is the time to do so.
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