Blair's leadership challenge

As Tony Blair sits down to a summit in Ethiopia today the stakes - or hype - could not be greater: the rescue of Africa.

The British prime minister's commission on Africa is meeting on the continent for the first time to further an ambitious plan to heal what he calls a scar on the world's conscience.

Africa's poverty and conflict is to be at the heart of next year's British presidency of the European Union and leadership of the G8 group of industrialised nations.

Flanked by the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi, and the Irish musician turned activist Bob Geldof, Mr Blair is expected to outline the west's duty to rethink its policies on trade, aid and debt.

There will be much talk of helping Africa to help itself, of unleashing the potential of a continent neither hopeless nor helpless but eager and able to develop.

That is noble and sensible. End unfair European and US trade policies, for example, and Africa could export much more cotton and sugar.

But there is a catch: given the opportunity to progress, how tightly would the continent grasp it? Would Africa's leaders take the bold and sometimes difficult decisions to uplift their people?

The past few decades have witnessed the emergence of a series of tyrants, kleptocrats and bumblers who drove their countries into the ground. If their ilk are still in charge, Mr Blair's commission will fail, no matter how well received in the west.

The prime minister knows this, which is why he will allude to the need for "governance", "transparency" and "leadership", codewords for rulers not to steal or aggrandize. Mr Geldof is likely to make the same point in more earthy language.

But evidently both men think African governments can be partners in the great rescue mission, otherwise they would not have launched it.

It follows an evolution in aid policy, championed by Britain's former development secretary, Clare Short, to break the donor habit of micromanaging aid projects and instead giving the money to governments and allowing them to spend it. "Capacity building," in the jargon.

The commission is not due to report its findings until next year but odds are it will recommend, among other things, that the west cancel debt and end trade distortions and that Africa promote relatively clean, competent leadership.

Could the continent deliver that? Some countries, the likes of Botswana, South Africa and Senegal, already do, and a regional initiative, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad), is spreading the good governance gospel.

But you have to wonder. To travel through Angola, Swaziland, Congo and Nigeria is to undertake an odyssey in corruption. From immigration officials to police officers to politicians, fingers rub together demanding bribes, behaviour which trickles from the top down.

I remember four municipal officials in Malawi insisting that I accompany them on a tour of rural water pumps yet they showed zero interest in the pumps, the villagers or my questions. The reason: they just wanted the field trip allowance. Hardly grand avarice but they reeked of contempt for the people they were supposed to serve.

Africa is a continent of workshops, where NGOs gather experts in sanitation, nutrition and disease. Some are excellent but many are attended by visibly bored, unmotivated delegates interested solely in the "sitting" allowance. In Malawi, a defunct political party was revived solely to cash in on a western-funded democracy workshop.

Mr Geldof knows well the difficulties. Last year he made an impassioned speech to Ethiopian dignitaries in Addis Ababa, where the commission meets today, and called on the city's mayor, the country's president and the head of the orthodox church to accompany him to a HIV clinic where they would all be tested.

Stigma inhibits the fight against HIV/Aids, which drives poverty and hunger, so the Irishman's challenge was an opportunity for the three political and religious leaders to do precisely that, lead. They chose not to.