Call to arms on Africa
Tony Blair and Thabo Mbeki are right to describe the fight against poverty in Africa as the most pressing moral challenge of our time. They are also right to say progress depends on leadership from African governments, but that rich countries can and should do more to help. The coming months offer several opportunities for Tony Blair to take specific action which would further his commitment to Africa and we urge him to take the following steps.
First, he could demonstrate the UK's determination to curb the flow of small arms to Africa by including the promised legislation in the first Queen's speech of the new parliament next week.
Second, he could use next month's G8 summit in Genoa as an opportunity for making progress on a range of issues critical to Africa's development, including health, education and debt.
Third, he could ensure that the government uses the WTO ministerial meeting in Qatar this November to press for improved market access for African countries, an end to the subsidised dumping of agricultural products and reform of WTO patent rules in order to protect poor people's access to medicines.
Over the next six months, we believe it would be possible to make real progress in each of these areas and we urge Tony Blair to seize the opportunity of his second landslide victory to press for radical international action.
Barbara Stocking
Director, Oxfam
• South Africa has 5m HIV sufferers, acute education, health and development needs. To solve these problems would indeed involve admirable struggles.
The UK Department for International Development allocated just £47.8m to South Africa in 1999-2000. Yet, in the same year, South Africa ordered £3bn of UK aircraft, and more recently had the luxury to deliberate ordering £2.9bn of UK Super Lynx helicopters for its new naval warships.
Frantic military purchasing and not a "rogue" state or a serious security threat in sight. No wonder the UK government wants to join Mr Mbeki's struggle ... whatever that is.
Richard Bingley
Campaign Against Arms Trade
• No doubt both leaders would recognise that their proposed new partnership with the international community should include the fight against corruption, not least where this is fuelled by bribes paid by international business.
Companies based in the UK are no strangers to such practices: of the first 67 companies to be debarred by the World Bank since 1998 for corrupt practices in relation to contracts funded by the Bank, 36 are British. Nearly all of these projects were in Africa.
This situation might be described as being actively encouraged by the UK government since such bribes remain tax deductible.
Three authorities are examining the possibility that up to five European companies (including British Aerospace) may have behaved improperly in relation to the 1999 £5bn arms purchase by the South African government. Daimler Chrysler is already the subject of an investigation by the prosecutor's office in Munich.
The most explicit commitment the UK can make to fighting corruption in Africa is to criminalise a bribe paid overseas and to end the regime by which such bribes are tax deductible. All other larger OECD member states have introduced such legislation since signing the OECD anti-bribery convention in 1997.
Britain stands alone as the proponent of double speak and obfuscation on this issue, and in this way threatens to undermine the whole momentum of the global fight against corruption.
Laurence Cockcroft
Transparency International