Tony Blair on Thursday defended his “thoroughly interventionist” foreign policy in a farewell speech in Africa.
In a passionate defence of his commitment to Africa over the past decade, the prime minister urged the continent’s leaders and the west to square up to the challenges ahead.
Speaking at the University of South Africa Business School in Midrand, near the capital Pretoria, Mr Blair said Africa was a subject “close to my heart” and had been at the top of his foreign policy agenda throughout his decade in power.
The prime minister made a robust defence of his twin policies of intervention and support to help African countries.
“It is easy for people to mock the pretensions of an interventionist policy, and intervention never fares as well as we would like,” he said.
“But consider the alternative and then make the choice. Suppose we did nothing. Actually we do not need to hypothesise. We did nothing or as little as Rwanda slid into genocide, as HIV/Aids grew ... as governments in the 1980s and 1990s faltered or strayed from a proper path.
“The international action of the past few years hasn’t transformed Africa, but it has undoubtedly made it better.”
Mr Blair cited Darfur as a prime example of the need to act as well as give financial aid to a continent beleaguered by poverty, Aids, and conflict.
Universal access
Mr Blair tasked both the west and the Africa Union countries to commit to raising people out of poverty and providing universal access to education and healthcare for people affected by HIV/Aids.