My Lords, I owe an apology to your Lordships, especially the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, for not being present when he opened the debate. The previous debate collapsed early and my calculations went awry.

I bring no special knowledge—I have done nothing practical all my life—but I can speak as an academic. Fifty years ago, we would have had a similar debate about not Africa but Asia. Fifty years ago, we were worried about starvation—famines—in China and India, that the growing mass of the Asian population would be unable to feed itself and that Asia might become a dangerous place.

I say that partly to illustrate that it is easy to be gloomy but things may change, and partly to pose a question about which I have been worrying quite a lot lately. How is it that, compared to the early 1960s, when we were much more optimistic about Africa, which had a much more favourable resource situation, and were much more pessimistic about Asia, today, 50 years on, we have reversed our regions of pessimism and optimism? We now regard Asia as something of a success—perhaps east Asia more than south Asia—and Africa as a dire problem. We must continually think about that, because there are lessons to be learnt for Africa from Asia's success that we have not yet learnt.

I have arrived at the conclusion that Asian governments, corrupt as they often are—they are not all democratic, either, although they are more so recently—have in some sense been more responsive to their people and less alienated from them than African governments. That is a generalisation and, as with all generalisations, one may point to particular exceptions. But neither a Mobutu nor a Bokassa regime has happened in Asia. The worst was Marcos. Corrupt as the Asian elite are, they do not salt away their money in Switzerland or France; they spend it at home. That shows not that they are not corrupt but that they are not alienated from their people, which is an important element of governance.

About 10 years ago, Basil Davidson wrote a book called The Black Man's Burden, in which he discussed the failure of African countries to make a success of nation state formation. It is a burden. The important aspect is not only what we call governance, but when the members of the political elite become responsive and not alienated from their own people. We need to look at how Asia has succeeded in that regard. Asia has multi-ethnic populations as in Malaysia; it has had a colonial experience; it has had all sorts of natural disasters; but it has managed.

From the 1970s to the 1990s there have been more civil and international wars and conflicts in Africa than in Asia. Somehow Asia escaped early and has not had a serious war since the 1970s. But southern Africa, in particular—Angola, Mozambique and other countries—has been through vicious wars. The international community has either stood by, in some senses, has aided or abetted in the wars, or has failed to solve them. Today, happily, apart from the sad case of Zimbabwe, there are few such situations. But the cessation of hostilities in Angola and Mozambique, in particular, and the removal of apartheid in South Africa have not yet led to positive fruits. Such changes take time. We must remember that much of southern Africa is in a post-conflict recovery situation, and development is difficult in those circumstances.

Many noble Lords referred to rural development, especially in agriculture. Asia had a green revolution that transformed the prospect of feeding people in India, China and throughout the continent. Such a revolution has not yet touched Africa. African agricultural productivity was, broadly, higher than that in Asia in the 1960s. Africa is now behind; its productivity has not grown, and, if anything, its agriculture has deteriorated.

Part of the answer lies in what the European Union and the USA have been doing. As many noble Lords pointed out, the European Union's agricultural policy does positive harm to African agriculture. I have been quoted as calling it a "crime against humanity", and I stand by that. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford, who is present, will remember that we participated in a press conference at which we highlighted the example of Ghana. Ghana's tomato industry was encouraged; people said that it should have tomato-canning factories; but then Italians ruined the Ghanaian tomato industry by dumping their surplus tomatoes in the country. How can one have a growing agricultural industry in a country on which a very rich continent continually dumps its agricultural surplus because it has a horrid agricultural subsidy policy?

Apparently, the European Union will now protect its subsidies policy under the guise of an environmental issue. I have never heard anything more sickening than what the EU is doing in the WTO negotiations. But let us hope that the WTO negotiations on agricultural adjustment will be successful. Let us hope that the resistance to it will not be successful and that export subsidies will be cut. I know that the DfID and all my noble friends in the Government will try their hardest to reverse the EU's position and to make it a better behaved institution than at present. We should also urge our American friends to reduce their agricultural subsidies so that we do not do any more harm.

Do not give more aid; but do not do so much harm. If you give 50 billion dollars in aid and 500 billion dollars in agricultural subsidies, do not increase the aid, but reduce the 500 billion dollars of subsidies. I would not even mind if the saved money was kept. But the 500 billion dollars does enormous harm. Our stance ought to be much stronger. I wish that the anti-globalisation movement demonstrated against agricultural subsidies rather than against the WTO—but that is another story.

I believe that the essence of NePAD is right. I think that eventually African development will be solved by Africa. I am not optimistic about altruism as a driving force in societies. Economists tend not to trust altruism; they trust self-interest. If we can stop harming Africa, encourage trade with it, and encourage it to invest in rural development, perhaps the millennium development goals will not be realised by 2015, but at least we will be well on our way to doing so.