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The Africans ‘left behind’

Born poor, live poor, expect to die poor unless ...

Political stability

Political stability provides a more fertile ground for development strategies to take root.

Political stability is something that is easy to talk about but much harder to achieve.

Especially in Africa’s least developed countries.
Countries within Africa are easily affected by instability in their international

neighbours. Africa has 16 landlocked countries (LLDC) and many of these are also classed

as ‘least developed’. These LLDC can both be victims of instability in their neighbours and
also causes of instability.

The need for internal political stability requires that development strategies for

Africa’s least developed countries need to be delivered within a regional international
context.

Within individual African countries there are ‘left behind regions’. I have seen a bus
being burnt by angry young Ethiopians in an otherwise peaceful city. They did this

completely unafraid of lorries of soldiers watching them from across the street. Some of

the military vehicles had the sort of heavy machine guns that could rip apart a human
body. But the anger of a young generation who see no hope of a future can start a fire that

can ‘catch light’ and become hard to contain.

Many people have expressed doubts as to the wisdom of the UK directly funding
infrastructure projects such as the building of new roads.

My chance meeting with a UK government minister who had just attended the
opening of such a road reinforced such doubts, As both he and I agreed such a road

almost certainly failed to create any legacy which improved the life of ordinary local

people.
DfiD/FCDO might achieve more for Africa’s least developed nations if its strategies

focused on

Developing with the African Union (AU) development strategies for former countries
such as Malawi (which is also a LLDC) which have a regional international context.
(In Malawi’s case this might well involve initiatives which create ‘import substitution’ manufacturing in
‘Special Enterprise Zones on the Malawi side of Lake Nyasa and better port facilities around the lake so
as to boost regional international trade)
Resourcing Community Economic Development projects in some of the ‘left behind’
regions within some of Africa’s ‘least developed’ countries.

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