Washington, DC — Leaders of over 70 African and European countries have arrived in Lisbon for this weekend's African Union/European Union summit. Refusing to attend, in protest at the inclusion of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown appointed Baroness Amos – Valerie Ann Amos – to represent the United Kingdom.
The Zimbabwe controversy threatens to overshadow –at least in media coverage – the issues of trade, development, the role of China in Africa and the conflicts in Darfur and the DRC that will confront the 5000 delegates and journalists who have gathered in the Portuguese capital for the summit. And Baroness Amos has seen a small controversy erupt around her own participation, when former British secretary for international development, Claire Short, told the BBC last week that, "it's not right to send her because she's black. I don't see any other reason for sending her."
UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband called Short's comment "a bit insulting" – a defense that could be seen as a classic example of British understatement, when measured against Amos's resume. Born in Guyana in 1954, she moved as a child with her family to Britain, where she began her political career with the Labour Party, working in local government in London. Attracting attention for her intellect, poise and ability to communicate, she was appointed to a succession of increasingly influential posts, becoming under-secretary of state in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, responsible for Africa, the Caribbean and the Commonwealth, before succeeding Claire Short as secretary of state for international development in 2003 – making her the first black woman to sit in cabinet.
In 1989 she became chief executive of the Equal Opportunities Commission, and in 1995 she founded a consultancy firm and advised Nelson Mandela and the new government of South Africa on public service reform, human rights and employment equity. That year she received an honorary degree from Thames Valley University for her work on "equality and social justice".
In 1997 she was made a life peer and served as a government whip and as spokesperson on social security, international development and women's issues. In 2003 she became the third woman and the first person of color to become leader of the House of Lords. She served as Lord President of the Council – one of the four "Great Officers of State" of the United Kingdom – who presides over meetings of the Privy Council. Andrew Grice, political editor of the Independent newspaper, quoted aides to Tony Blair as saying "the Prime Minister believed Baroness Amos was a heavy hitter who could handle a big workload in the Lords in the next year, including controversial plans to remove the 92 hereditary peers, abolish the post of Lord Chancellor and set up a Supreme Court."
She has served as personal representative of the prime minister to the G8 group of most developed countries, responsible for the 2003 G8 Africa Action Plan. She was Britain's representative to the African Union and in June was nominated by the prime minister to become European Union special representative and head of the European Commission delegation to the African Union, a newly combined post.
This week that job went to European Commission insider Koen Vervaeke, a Belgian diplomat who has been serving European Union Secretary-General Javier Solana as advisor on African affairs and as head of the Africa Unit in the European Council's General Secretariat. Writing in the Independent last month, Henry Deedes raised the prospect that British EU Commissioner Peter Mandelson might block the Amos candidacy, due to wariness "of having a former Cabinet minister on his turf while he's in the middle of crunch trade talks with Africa."
Whatever the story, it is unlikely that this weekend's high-pressure job of representing Britain in Lisbon will be Valerie Amos's last high-profile engagement with African and development issues. In an interview at AllAfrica's Washington DC office last month, the baroness talked about her views and her motivations.
What are Africa's major challenges?
The challenges we face are global ones. They are not just challenges for the African continent; they are challenges that we have to face together. They are about issues of individual liberties versus collective security; about migration; about technological development; about governance; about the state of our planet in terms of the environment and climate and the whole subset of issues around poverty and HIV/Aids.
The challenge is fundamentally about how we, as different peoples, are going to live in the world in a state of peace and security. It sounds very motherhood and apple pie, but it is the thing that everyone in the world wants and that we have failed to secure or deliver.
But poverty has persisted in Africa, giving rise to theories that intrinsic factors – culture, competence, "readiness" for democracy – are to blame.
It's a philosophy that I don't accept. I think it is a debate that comes back and dogs our societies, time after time – a debate that is used to oppress peoples in the world. There are a whole range of reasons why countries on the African continent have been held back, which have to do with conflict, governance, politics, slavery, colonialism, imperialism. African peoples have historically been through a great deal in terms of slavery, imperialism, colonialism. But at the same time, there is the other side of the coin, which is the depth of history, tradition and culture. It is a complicated story and a complicated history, and I think that trying to simplify it in something like nature versus nurture, we are actually being intellectually lazy.
So what should friends of Africa do?
I don't have a definitive list of what should be done. We all come to these issues with different perspectives and different solutions. I think that sometimes when issues appear to be at their most challenging and their most difficult, that is the time to do something, because it is the point at which people want a resolution. Out of that you can find opportunity.
It is really important that we don't look at the continent as one undifferentiated body. There are differences within countries and between countries. I really worry about the way that the perception of the continent is infected by a kind of solid negativity – which is not just about the west looking in but also about Africans in the wider Diaspora looking back at their countries and being pretty negative about what is going on. We should do more to talk about the changes that have happened in the last few years, while, at the same time, being absolutely clear about the challenges which remain.
The third thing I would say is that it is really important to work in partnership with African peoples who have their own ideas about what they want and why they want it. Too often, we think that we can impose solutions. That is why I always say that finding ways to encourage participation and engagement within countries is so important – supporting not only the NGO community but also ordinary citizens.
You've been outspoken on including women among those participants, and you've just been speaking at a British Embassy-sponsored symposium on women's empowerment. What was it like?
The atmosphere was wonderful. It was one of those conferences where, at the end of the day, they had to keep turning the lights on and off because nobody wanted to leave. There's something that happens quite often at conferences about women. It's hard to explain, because you don't want to get into stereotyping, but very often the mood is different – very often there is a sense of support and solidarity which you don't necessarily get elsewhere. I think people were glad to come together to talk about women and leadership on the African continent and to talk about it in the context of a wider diaspora – how African women across the world contribute to the changes that are happening on the continent.
There was a lot of realism about the challenges and what they mean, but a lot of optimism too. A wonderful woman from Sierra Leone, who runs an organization called Fifty Fifty, was absolutely confident that the next president of Sierra Leone is going to be a woman. I think she got a lot of people who are going to help her campaign for the next elections!
Many countries are discussing gender quotas as a way to get more women into political leadership? How do you see that question?
In the UK, we would not have managed to get a critical mass of women into parliament unless the Labour Party had introduced something called "all-women short lists." Women were going for selection as members of parliament, and you would have maybe one woman on the shortlist with three or four men, and the women were not being selected. So we decided that for certain safe seats, where you would end up in parliament if you won the nomination, some of those seats would have women-only short lists .It was hugely controversial because someone always loses out, somebody local, who has watched this seat for a long time and who has felt: 'This is going to be mine'. The Labour Party was actually taken to court. But the proof of the success of the policy is the fact that in 1997 we managed to get over one hundred women into parliament for the first time. We would have never have had that without the policy of all-women short lists.
You have to look at quotas, you have to look at all-women short lists, you have to look at ways of supporting women financially – because they always have more trouble raising money than men do. You have to help women to be mentored, to give them training, and recognize that if we don't have adequate representation of women in parliament, we are denying a significant proportion of the population the right to be represented adequately.
More African-trained nurses and doctors, by far, are practicing outside Africa than in their home countries. How can the critical shortage of health professionals be addressed?
This is difficult for a range of reasons. It is difficult to tell people they can't migrate, because people are looking for better lives for themselves and their families. In addition, if you can migrate and feed an entire village, feed your family, educate your children, educate your brother's and sister's children, you will think about it seriously.
I think that we have to be more creative. We have to work on development, so that people's countries of origins become the places where people can make a decent living and where their children can be educated. We need to create the conditions where investment stays, as well. I am always astounded at the amount of capital flight out of the continent. Forty percent of Africa's resources held by Africans are overseas.
We need to be looking at things like helping countries overproduce doctors, teachers, nurses, and others, bearing in mind that some will migrate and others will stay. We have to look at it in the round.
Nigeria – for reasons of sheer size and wealth – is always an important discussion internationally. One current issue is corruption and the transfer of funds out of the country.
We've been pushed very hard by the Nigerian government in the past, where there was concern that assets which had been stolen from the people of Nigeria were laundered through financial institutions in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. I am very proud of the fact that my government passed legislation about stolen assets, whatever their source. It's now possible for governments outside of the UK to use that legislation to recover assets, where they can prove that those assets were stolen from the people of that country.
Part of the agenda is a wider issue of governance. I don't think it is just about corruption. I think it is about transparency and how governments hold themselves accountable. One of the ways in which that has been done in recent years is something called the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, where companies investing in resource-rich, developing countries with oil sectors, mining, forestry and logging – that kind of thing – would declare what they are paying to governments for that privilege. Governments will also voluntarily make that information available to their citizens. That is the beginning of a process of becoming more transparent.
We recognize Nigeria's importance to the development of the continent as a whole. One in four Africans lives in Nigeria. It's a resource-rich country, as well as being a country where there are significant numbers of people still living in poverty. It's a country where, historically, there have been some very good examples of the way in which people of different religions have managed to live together but which have become much more polarized in the last few years.
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I think we also recognize the importance – for Nigerians – of Nigeria working. Nigeria has not been an independent country for 50 years yet. So I think we should focus on supporting the positive and talking in robust terms, in private, about the things that we think need to be improved.
The Zimbabwe question continues to plague your policy makers.
It is a tragedy that we have a humanitarian crisis in a country like Zimbabwe. Britain are the second biggest donors to Zimbabwe, even today. Most of the money is spent tackling HIV/Aids and feeding vulnerable women and children. This is a country that is perfectly capable of producing enough food – not only for its population, but for the population in the surrounding region. The level of inflation, the humanitarian crisis, the abuse of human rights is a tragedy for the people of Zimbabwe, and we need to do something about it.
What is Britain's responsibility? We have a responsibility as an ex-colonizer, if you like. I think the support we are giving the people of Zimbabwe through our humanitarian program is a recognition of that. But because of the colonial history, the politics become skewed. So we have to look to others in the international community, and particularly those in southern Africa, as well as through the United Nations and through the European Union, to approach this as a collective response to the situation rather than Britain's response to the political situation.
Anyone who knows the strength of feeling in the United Kingdom about the humanitarian issues will understand the political pressures in the UK. The British prime minister thinks it is important that the European Union and the African Union have the possibility of dialogue and discussion. I hope that what will come out of the Summit will be some frank and open discussions about the situation in Zimbabwe and how the international community can engage in the issue. But there must be a wider EU-Africa agenda, so that everything that is happening on the African continent is not seen through the prism of Zimbabwe, which is what quite often happens.
Is this a moment of possibility in European African relations?
There is a real opportunity to transform the relationship between the countries that make up the African Union and the European Union and between the two institutions. I think it will be an immensely difficult job, because it is about managing such diverse and different relationships. But at the same time, I think that an agenda which has at its heart the issues around peace and security, sustainable development, migration, governance is one that is really worth fighting for.
What has kept you engaged with African issues throughout your career?
It has to be the people. This is a continent with people who are rich in terms of their diversity, their depth, their talent – and at the same time you see millions of people living in abject poverty who should not be. And I think that what draws me back, time and time again, is the miracle of the continent that gave us all life.
