Africa: Colonialism still rife - just better disguised

Now the favoured classes in Africa share the same patronage of the first world creating a huge gap between rich and poor and supporting despotic governments. We continue to pay homage to the tin-pot dictators in favour, for access to natural resources. The west supported Mobutu Sese-Seko for 30 years in return for the Democratic Republic of Congo's diamonds and timber. Kabila now enjoys similar patronage despite presiding over a nation in such a state of disrepair that it attracts more aid organisations than any other in Africa.

Across the Congo River in Brazzaville, Jacques Chirac was cordially received a couple of months ago by President Denis Sassou-Nguesso. After a few public, but ineffectual, swipes at Sassou's environmental record no doubt the back door discussion assured the profits of French oil company, Total, for years to come. Sassou has presided over three civil wars since 1975, there hasn't been an election for nearly a decade, yet he continues to receive European support.

Finally, western companies continue to eat up the resources of Africa with an appetite that has continued since the late 19th century. The exploitation began in central and west Africa in the cultivation of natural rubber, an industry worth billions in today's terms. Now French and Italian timber companies pillage the Congo basin for timber at a rate equivalent to the destruction of the Amazon. Even a few Australian contractors have a finger in the African resource pie, in Congolese oil and Tanzanian nickel.

Tony Blair and the British Government have done well to identify the problems of the nations of today's Africa in this report. But to solve these problems he, like the rest of us, needs to read Heart of Darkness again. We need to remember Mr Kurtz and the infamy of colonialism in Africa. We need to recognise that our attitudes have barely changed, that we're just more skilful at disguising them. In doing so, we may change these attitudes, and start to implement the plans put forward by the African commission last week. In doing so we can exorcise the Kurtz within.