Mr. Jamie Drummond:

Sorry, trade is a tough one. I have spent a lot of time working on it and have less to show for those efforts than I would like. The area of domestic politics is often very difficult. I am familiar with the power of the farming lobby in the west of Ireland, for example and that makes some of the arguments difficult. In the long run, we have had some victories, including the campaign to end the export subsidies that encouraged dumping in developing markets. That is not happening anymore or if it is happening, it is happening too creatively to be found. We also created the African growth and opportunity act which has created hundreds of thousands of jobs on the continent. The biggest impediment to economic growth on the continent currently is the lack of regional trade within the region. The degree to which the post-Cotonou process, the economic partnership agreements, EPAs, etc., can open our markets in an appropriate way while also opening their markets to each other in a carefully managed way is extremely important. As Mo Ibrahim would put it, too many African economies and countries are sub-scale. They are too small. It is a security imperative that they regionally, and, possibly, even politically, integrate in the end. If one looks at places such as the Sahel, it needs far greater regional integration. If one looks at the East African Community, EAC, it too needs far greater regional integration if those economies are to work. Countries such as Rwanda and Burundi desperately need more trade and cross-border investment with their neighbours in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and then onward to the borders and global trade.

Ultimately, those trade deals are extremely important and the infrastructure to facilitate trade is extremely important too. People win and lose when trade deals happen. The losers in that process have not been looked after and invested in, particularly through education, appropriately. That has been a serial failure of global trade agreements. Promises are made that the poorest will be looked after when the restructuring happens but those promises are not kept. Then there is a backlash and the xenophobes do better in elections, but that is avoidable.