Africa for the Africans

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Dr Paul Moorcraft argues that Bob Geldof and Tony Blair should leave Africa well alone

GIVING more aid to Africa is like telling an alcoholic he needs a stiff drink to help kick his addiction. That's my view after spending much of the last 30 years travelling in, or writing about a continent which is going backwards.

This conviction was confirmed last week when I attended the Tswalu dialogue in South Africa, an annual event for African leaders and foreign experts, funded by the generosity of the continent's richest family, the Oppenheimers.

But much of the continent is starving, especially next-door Zimbabwe. So what to do about it? Despite the exceptions - the British armed forces' impressive recent role in Sierra Leone, for example - as a general rule Western governments, their military and …