RWANDA HAS been at the centre of world attention lately. From accommodating Britain’s first offshore immigration detention centre (yet to receive its’ first resident), to joining the Commonwealth, to backing of the ‘M23’ militia currently destabilising its’ giant neighbour the Democratic Republic of Congo, to president Paul Kagame continuing to face questions about current political oppression and his role in the 1994 genocide.

But one story has slipped under the radar. And that involves Britain’s former Prime Minister, Tony Blair. Since being wrenched from Number 10 in 2007, Blair and his charity has been earning big money from several African nations, not least Rwanda, for services helping those nations develop and implement policy. 

Does Africa, still recovering from colonialism, really need Blair to tell them what to do? Probably not, but his policy advice may not be his real selling point. Because the true value of Blair lies in his contact book; making introductions between African heads of state and international financier big cheeses like the Rockefeller Foundation.

Kagame has hailed Blair as “a visionary”, while Blair has been appearing in the media arguing that the West should not withdraw international aid over Rwanda’s involvement in bloodletting in DRC, arguing that the “economic miracle” in the central African state would be put at risk.

Rwanda has been getting assistance from the Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative (AGI) charity. Kagame, who has ruled his country for 29 years, wrote a gushing testimonial to the work of the AGI in the charity’s annual report, saying: “In the last two years, it has produced substantive and tangible results.”  

AGI, which has partly rebranded to become the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBIGC), claims to be delivering ‘support’ to Rwanda’s government departments – even while the central African country is still involved in the DRC conflict.

Kagame remains accused by a United Nations report of horrifying war crimes and human rights abuses, mainly concerning the 1994 Rwandan genocide but also regarding Rwanda’s involvement in a decade of blood-letting in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Social commentator and campaigner Maurice Mcleod said: “Once a Prime Minister has finished their stint you could argue they’re free to go off and make money how they want, but I do think there’s something wrong with a Prime Minister using contacts he has made for financial gain.

“It’s not like Blair has stood down from speaking publicly about British politics. It seems he makes a ‘rare return to British politics’ every week. 

“Who pays the piper calls the tune, and they know what they’re buying when they buy someone like Tony Blair; they’re buying his contacts and his knowledge, but they’re also buying a spokesman who will go out there and spin their lines for them.”

Michela Wong, in her 2021 book Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad, writes that “the Western media had been duped into believing this ‘economic miracle’” in Rwanda by Blair.

AGI/TBIGC is one of a network of Blair’s charities and foundations, one of which is an interfaith body which at times appears to be really promoting faith in Tony Blair, the statesman, over the benefits of religion.

Team Blair has staff in the presidents and prime minister’s offices as well as in the Ministry of Finance and in the Rwandan Development Board. They are said to mentor local workers and help them implement policy.

Soon after AGI was established in Rwanda, in 2009, it is reported that Blair led a delegation to the capital Kigalo which included Christian Angermayer, a founder of one of Germany’s largest financial services groups. Famous banker Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, and his wife Lady Rothschild, visited Rwanda accompanied by presidential guards.

It appears that Blair’s charity is operating as a firm of commercial management consultants, drawing up policies and implementation plans for African governments, while at the same time hooking their clients up with high-level contacts made during his time as prime minister for business deals. In Rwanda, Blair has picked one of the world’s fastest growing economies.

While Blair acts as speed-date organiser between global bankers and the Rwandan regime, last month a Rwandan newspaper editor, John Williams Ntwali, wound up dead after being “regularly threatened”, according to respected international body Human Rights Watch.

Ntwali died in a motorcycle accident on 18 January, but Human Rights Watch says it hasn’t been able to find a police report of any traffic accident at the location. He is the latest in a long line of government critics who have met a premature end.

Blair’s wife Cherie, a QC, recently represented Rwandan General Karenzi Karake in court following his arrest on an international warrant for ‘war crimes against civilians.’

And Blair himself has appeared in the media, including on the BBC, arguing Rwanda’s case that it should not face any penalties – for example withdrawal of aid – over its’ support for the M23 rebels which last week seized the strategic town of Kitshanga in the eastern DRC after days of fierce fighting, drawing condemnation from the UN.

It’s not just Rwanda where Blair is involved. His charity works in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda, Guinea and Nigeria. 

According to documents at the Charities Commission, Blair aimed to “…pioneer new ways of working with African countries, enabling committed African leaders with the capacity to deliver the public services which their citizens have the right to expect, to tackle deep-rooted poverty, and to attract the sustainable investment necessary to build strong economies for the future.”

TBIGC has an annual turnover of £35 million, plus £49 million in reserves, and over 300 staff, but Blair’s personal financial arrangements are complex and secretive, with an intricate web of accounts.

Another country Blair is heavily involved in is Sierra Leone. Blair and the west African state go way back. His father, Leo, worked there in the 1970s, and as prime minister he sent 1,000 British troops there to crush the Revolutionary United Front army as they advanced on Freetown.

The public were initially told the intervention was just to rescue British citizens from a worsening civil war – driven by illegal trade in diamonds to Belgium and Lebanon – but it was clearly about much more than that. It was about propping up a government that was about to fall. And, having secured stability, Britain then delivered training for the Sierra Leone police and army.

Sierra Leone is a former British colony which began as a land for freed slaves from America but was previously dominated by the Koranko  and Temne kingdoms. In 2002, Blair was crowned Paramount Chief of the village of Mahera near Freetown, the capital which was named in honour of the former slave settlers. Blair carries the title of Paramount Chief Bai Sherbora Mathuff, meaning Man of Peace. Literally. Blair made no mention of Iraq in his acceptance speech. 

Today, as well as supporting the present government, Blair has turned ‘missionary’, with a Faiths Act project in Sierra Leone which somehow merges religion with an anti-malaria vaccination drive.

Cherie linked up with Sia Nyama Koroma, the first lady of Sierra Leone, to develop a mobile phone technology programme for women and taking part in an African Women’s Entrepreneurship scheme. 

She has also been working with South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria to “harness the benefits of mobile technology for women entrepreneurs in Africa” in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation. Her foundation’s report identifies a “market opportunity” worth US$2 billion in sub-Saharan Africa. Tony Blair is also helping Sierra Leone promote its’ potentially lucrative tourism industry. 

One newspaper report highlighted JP Morgan’s interests in Sierra Leone and the fact that it had awarded a £2m contract with Blair’s foundation. 

Blair has made over £50m since leaving office, which – as the Guardian pointed out – is funneled through a “Byzantine” and “opaque” complex web of structures involving 12 different legal entities, and a company called Windrush Ventures No 3 Limited Partnership.

Given Blair’s record in Iraq, which has turned him into an international figure of hate, his value to Africa lies more in his contacts than his reputation.

Introducing Western big business to African leaders doesn’t just make Blair a middle-man, it suggests Africa’s profits from expanding markets could increasingly be expatriated to the West, in the same way multinational agribusiness brought huge tracts of land for commercial farming in the 1970s and 80s.

Western agribusiness patent the seeds, import tractors and machinery, provide all the spare parts, export the raw produce to be processed and packaged back in the West, and take profits back to the West. Africans were mere farm labourers. A key question today is this: over and above the extra labour employed by new businesses moving in to take advantage of Africa’s fledgling boom, to what degree will ordinary Africans benefit?

In a little-reported speech in 2013, Blair outlined his vision for Africa, and identified the barriers to progress as being governance and lack of foreign investment. He said: “This is not only true of… mining and food production [but also] there remain huge opportunities [in the] expansion of the oil and gas sectors in many countries. It is essential that intellectual capital comes in.”

He added: “And for the private sector, for the people in this room, Africa is a great investment destination. The returns are there, the trajectory is positive.”

The message is clear – the new gold rush has begun. The new Scramble for Africa. He appears to be saying: let me, Tony Blair, design the policies for African governments and deal with its’ leaders while you, my business friends, use your financial muscle to grab as much of the growing economy as possible to make profits for you back in the West.

No wonder he’s so busy with Africa he’s not keeping on top of British political affairs. Never mind Chief of Mahera, Tony Blair is on his way to becoming the new King of Africa, and possibly amassing riches in the process.

Blair may be pushing 70, but he’s behaving like a young man on the make. And he can feel the hand of African history on his shoulder.

TBIGC were approached for comment two weeks ago.