Introduction
Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen - it is a great privilege to be invited to address this important conference.

This is a crucial time for Africa:

• Most of Africa has been growing over the last four years.
• Democracy is spreading and putting down roots - we saw the first democratic elections in the Congo last week.
• Africa has seized the attention of the world which is committed to double aid over the years ahead.
• But at the same time the Doha Round of trade talks which sere intended to create new opportunities for Africa has broken down.

• Here in Ghana a centre right party - the National Peoples Party - has been re-elected for a second time and the success of your policies is a beacon of hope throughout Africa.
• The ideas you stand for - a smaller state and a bigger role for the individual, the family, free enterprise - have been shown to work.
• By contrast, we have seen Communism collapse, socialism fail and dictatorships stumble.

The left everywhere is in retreat.

Our ideas are in the ascendant. But at the moment too many of our centre right parties are in Opposition. It is essential to have the tide of ideas flowing in our favour. But it is not sufficient. We have to demonstrate to our electorates that those ideas can be converted into practical and relevant policies that will enhance their lives.

	Our ideas are in the ascendant. But at the moment too many of our centre right parties are in Opposition. It is essential to have the tide of ideas flowing in our favour....

That is what the new leader of the Conservative Party is doing in Britain. He has reinvigorated our party and revived our fortunes. We are now consistently ahead in the opinion polls. Immediately he was elected, David Cameron announced a root and branch renewal cf our policies. He was determined to show that we are addressing the issues of today and tomorrow, not yesterday. So he identified six key areas and set up a policy group for each of them.

Globalisation and Global Poverty Policy Group

Most of those groups cover domestic issues. But he described one issue as the greatest moral challenge we in a developed country like the UK face:

How can we help to enable the billions of our fellow human beings across the globe who struggle to eke out an existence to join in the prosperity that globalisation has brought to the rest of us.

He asked me to chair this policy group on globalisation and global poverty.

• because I spent several years working on aid and development projects before I entered Parliament,
• because as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry I had been involved in the last round of World Trade negotiations,
• and also because as Secretary of State for Social Security I was responsible for tackling domestic poverty which has some lessons for tackling global poverty. Indeed I handled a budget greater than the entire world Aid budget and had to ensure that it genuinely reached those in genuine need and I wrestled to prevent it undermining self reliance and creating dependency and destroying personal enterprise all problems analogous to those in the field of international aid.

Most of you will have seen the Issues and Options Paper we published to guide the programme of research and policy development. I come here to ask your help in answering the questions we layout in that paper.

How can we in the UK make our International Development policies more effective in helping Africa?

I am immensely looking forward to hearing your views in the discussions and debates which are to follow. So your views will directly influence the development of policy recommendations for the next Conservative government. I am determined that those policies should reflect the realities of Africa.

One aspect of the Aid debate that has scarcely changed over the decades since I was working in this field, is how many arm chair theorists in the developed countries think it is their job and within their power to bring development to Africa.

This is nonsense - nonsense on stilts. African countries, or rather their peoples, will develop themselves. Just like every other country that has achieved prosperity. After all, prosperity is not measured by the amount of aid received. Prosperity results from producing the goods and services to consume or exchange, in greater abundance, with less effort and using resources more efficiently and sustainably.

Outsiders can at best help and at worst hinder that process.

Indeed, in development policy as in medicine, the first rule should be 'do no harm'. The sad truth is that many of our policies have been harmful. Our trade and agricultural policies have placed obstacles in the way of developing countries seeking to trade their way to prosperity.