| April 2005 archived edition | | Coverstory |
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Commission for Africa
Can this
man save
Africa?
Tony Blair launches his Commission for Africa Report and says: “I fear my own conscience on Africa. I fear the judgement of future generations, where history properly calculates the gravity of the suffering. I fear them asking: but how could wealthy people, so aware of such suffering, so capable of acting, simply turn away to busy themselves with other things?” A good punch line, but we ask, can Blair really save Africa? Here is the full text of what he said at the launch.
There can be no excuse, no defence, no justification for the plight of millions of our fellow human beings in Africa today. There should be nothing that stands in the way of our changing it. That is the simple message from the Commission for Africa report published today. Africa can change for the better. The report shows how.
The issue is: do we, together, in Africa and amongst the wealthy nations of our world, have the will? The moral reason is clear.
In a world of increasing prosperity and with more people sharing each year in this growing wealth, it is obscenity that should haunt our daily thoughts that four million children will die in Africa this year before their fifth birthday.
It’s little better that millions more of those children who do survive disease and hunger will be denied even basic schooling and can look forward only to a life of abject poverty. This is the fundamental moral challenge of our generation.
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