When Tony Blair announced the formation of the Commission for Africa in early 2004, he observed that the new development roundtable would build on the earlier economic inquiry that was spearheaded by former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt. In its 1980 report, North-South: A Programme for Survival, the Brandt Commission made two interrelated proposals. It called for (1) an emergency development programme for the world’s poorest nations, and (2) a thorough restructuring of the global economy in the areas of trade, finance, and monetary policy. I f developing nations would demonstrate greater domestic responsibility in creating their own goals, organizing financial resources, building productive capacity, and introducing civil reforms to better manage their economies, Brandt declared, developed nations would provide developing nations with financial and technical assistance, and undertake measures to restructure the global economic system to ensure international economic equity and stability. Fighting poverty, raising economic demand, and maintaining macroeconomic balance are essential for all nations, North and South alike, the Brandt Commission argued.

Popular response to the Brandt Reports was significant, but developed nations soon adopted pro-market ideologies and the economic emphasis shifted from demand-side policies for human and social development to supply-side policies of finance and trade liberalization, privatization, and donor-driven development. For nearly two decades there was little progress in setting quantifiable goals for development or in raising funds to meet those goals. But in recent years, a series of steps have been undertaken to create and fund global poverty targets:

• establishment of development goals for 2015 (UN Millennium Development Goals, 2000)
• new methods in development finance (International Conference on Financing for Development, 2002)
• new institutional bridges across Africa (New Partnership for Africa’s Development, 2001)
• agreement by developed nations to assist Africa (G-8 Africa Plan, 2002)
• major partnerships between the private and public sectors (World Summit on Sustainable Development, 2002)
• commitment to make development a priority in trade discussions and agreements (Doha Round of World Trade Organization negotiations, 2002-2005)

The latest in this line of development initiatives is the Commission for Africa report. Like the Brandt Report, it identifies areas of common interest and shared responsibility between rich and poor nations in the area of development. But because it does not address structural problems in global finance, monetary policy, and trade (beyond agricultural subsidies), Our Common Interest is not really ‘a new Brandt Report’. The Blair Report is, rather, the first step in the Brandt Commission’s recommendations – an emergency programme for the world’s poorest nations modeled on the Marshall Plan, which Brandt envisioned as “a major international effort for the linking of resources to developmental needs on the one hand and the full utilization of under-utlilized capacities on the other…an immediate action programme based in part on direct lending by surplus countries and their monetary authorities and in part on borrowing from the market guaranteed by governments, complemented by a measure of additional official assistance” (N-S, 254). With its sweeping proposals to end poverty and boost development in Africa, Blair’s Africa Plan is in fact an updated version of America’s Marshall Plan – the 1948-1951 relief effort that provided $12 bn in aid to rebuild Europe’s war-torn economies, restore its fragmented societies, and establish a political buffer against Soviet communism. Similarly, economic recovery, social justice, and international security are at the heart of the Blair Report’s relief programme for the African continent.

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