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When Prime Minister Andy Burnham called for a cross-party "consensus" on social care, you could practically hear the collective sigh of relief from Westminster’s pundit class. “Ah, marvelous,” they purred. “The grown-ups are finally taking their seats.”
The performance requires a villain. Africa has been performing that role for free, and at some cost to itself for considerably longer than it should have.
A viral video recently captured a doorstep exchange between Justin a Reform UK campaigner and Essex County Councillor out canvassing for Nigel Farage and an exceptionally sharp local voter. What followed wasn't just a quick chat about local bins; it was a masterclass in civic accountability.
Next in Abuja, four governments will do something that sounds, on paper, like a belated act of economic self-respect. Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire and Cameroon between them the source of roughly two-thirds of the cocoa that becomes the world's chocolate will sign the Abuja Declaration and stand up a Cocoa Value Addition Alliance, a coordinated attempt to stop shipping out raw beans and start capturing some of the value that currently accrues, almost entirely, to everyone else. Nigeria will additionally sign its own Cocoa Value Addition Accord, a domestic compact roping in governors, farmer groups, financiers and researchers into the project of turning bean into brand rather than bean into someone else's bar.
The immigrant today exists simultaneously as two incompatible creatures. On one hand, he is portrayed as a lazy welfare dependent draining public resources, crowding hospitals, filling council housing lists and surviving on benefits paid by hardworking natives. On the other hand, that same immigrant is somehow an unstoppable economic superhuman taking all the jobs, dominating industries, suppressing wages and outcompeting local workers in both skilled and unskilled sectors.
Centre for Nigeria Progress 