Brown urges funds for Africa
2005-01-12 14:23
Nairobi - British finance minister Gordon Brown opened a weeklong tour of Africa here on Wednesday with an appeal for the developed world to back a "new Marshall plan" to ease the continent's chronic poverty.
Brown, Britain's chancellor of the exchequer, said it was unacceptable for current conditions to continue as he visited a school in Kibera, Nairobi's largest slum, and urged a major boost in aid to education.
"It is simply not acceptable in the modern age for the rest of the world to stand by and have hundreds of millions of children not getting the chance at education," he said outside the Olympic Primary School.
Funding for education - to the tune of $10bn over the next 10 years - is a key element in Brown and British prime minister Tony Blair's ambitious plans to use Britain's 2005 presidency of the G8 group of industrialised nations to help Africa.
"It is surely for $10bn a year, one of the best investments we could ever make both for security reasons and social, educational and economic reasons to give every child the chance at primary education," he said.
"Over the next 10 years, we provide, as developed world, the resources necessary to get the teachers, the buildings, the staffing, the equipment, the books that are necessary - things that we take for granted in our countries that are not expensive in the long run," Brown said.
The way forward
"I believe passionately that that is the way forward," he said.
Brown said last week that rich nations had a duty to address the underlying causes of poverty and suggested a plan modelled on former US secretary of state general George Marshall's blueprint to restore the European economy from the devastation of World War II.
Other components in the proposal, which ultimately seeks to double global aid to the developed world to $100bn under the International Finance Facility, include debt relief and trade benefits.
But the scheme, to be introduced in the coming days at a meeting of G7 finance ministers, has reportedly met with scepticism from the United States and others.
US President George W Bush has launched his own development initiative for impoverished nations - the Millennium Challenge Account - which ties foreign aid to good governance, anti-graft measures and transparency.
Still, Brown expressed confidence that he would be able to win the support for the plans once the leaders of those nations realised the need.
"I believe when people around the world see what is being done, but also the horror of what is not being done, this year people will be moved to action," he said.
After visiting the school, Brown met with Kenyan officials, including last year's Nobel Peace laureate Wangari Maathai, the deputy environment minister.
Maathai thanked Brown for participating in a tree-planting ceremony and called his visit a sign of Britain's resolve to reward the commitment of African nations to sustainable development.