On October 12, it was announced that Matt Hancock, former UK health secretary, had been appointed UN special envoy to help Covid recovery in Africa. First reading about this in an article accompanied by a photo where Matt Hancock gives his thumbs up with a big smile on his face, my first reaction was that this surely had to be some type of The Onion article; a satiric take. But it wasn’t. The role of United Nations envoy for financial innovation and climate change for its Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) was assigned to the former UK health secretary due to his success in managing the UK’s pandemic response, more specifically his “economic policy expertise, experience operating financial markets at the Bank of England and in-depth understanding of government and multilateral through his various ministerial cabinet roles“, according to the Guardian.
— Matt Hancock (@MattHancock) October 12, 2021
The debates after this announcement have been many, with critics examining the history and actions of this specific person at length. However, the point of departure for this blog post is not whether this person is fit for the role due to his public and political history. Instead, I am interested in the structures allowing yet another Western/European man/person leading “Africa to prosper”, consequently assuming that this person is the best fit for the job, overlooking African leaders and experts for this position.
Adding a postcolonial lens; Whose expertise do we really listen to in international development initiatives? Says Sardar (1999) in McEwan (2018): “For some, the real power of the North lies not in its massive economic development and technical advances, but in its power to name, represent and theorise”. I come back to Meera Sabaratnam mentioned in my first post, and her core statement that international actors’ interventions in low- and middle-income countries keep failing because they are constituted through structural relations of colonial differences; underlying colonial dynamics consisting of constitutive assumptions regarding who is entitled to what in the world (and who is to blame for failure), rooted in forms of common sense that naturalise such inequalities of wealth and power (Sabaratnam, 2017:4). Flipping these structures upside down, shifting the discourse of international development is what is needed; feeding into old colonial structures of agency and discursive power is not. African voices, such as Dr Ayoade Alakija, co-chair of the African Union’s Africa Vaccine Delivery Alliance for Covid-19 and Sagal Bihi, a Somali MP, reacted similarly, with quotes such as: “-The definition of a colonial hangover. Decolonise aid – no, here’s Matty!” and “-Africa is seen by the west as [the] dumping ground for their locally unemployable shady characters”, according to The Telegraph.
And more than neo-colonialism and the UN’s complex donor relations and diplomacy, this is fundamentally also a question about underlying racism. Says Hugo Slim, Senior Research Fellow, Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, in a blog post:
“I wonder if racism is at the root of why we can’t ‘let go’ of our international power (…) and genuinely enable people and power in local organisations and national governments. I suspect it is. (…) But we are clearly still not trying hard enough, and this suggests a deeper reason. We can’t quite bear to share the system with ‘them’. We don’t really trust ‘them’ to get it right. Our colonial ancestors had misgivings about political independence, and so do we. And we like what we do and the rewards and reputation that it brings. Quite simply, we don’t want to give all this away.”
While Hugo Slim writes more directly about humanitarian practices and local operations, this could also be applied at the higher level. Again – whose expertise do we (and in this case, the UN) accept and trust to do the best job to help Covid recovery in Africa, leading “Africa to prosper”? Clearly not a person from Africa.
However, on Saturday, October 16, the UN withdrew the job offer to the former UK health secretary, allegedly due to campaigners objecting to the appointment “because of his record in government during the coronavirus crisis”, according to the Guardian. In other words, it was a question of a personal track record more than the structures surrounding the appointment, that led to this withdrawal. Let us see who the next candidate for the job will be.
It’s right for the UN to reconsider this appointment
If Matt Hancock had listened to African nations when in power, he’d have supported a patent waiver for Covid-19 vaccines
The last thing the African continent needs is a failed British politician. This isn’t the 19th Century https://t.co/i7gaza96Dp
— Global Justice Now (@GlobalJusticeUK) October 16, 2021
Sources:
McEwan, Cheryl (2018, 2nd ed) Postcolonialism, Decoloniality and Development. London: Routledge
Sabaratnam, Meera (2019) Decolonising Intervention: International Statebuilding in Mozambique. London/New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
Slim, Hugo/The Humanitarian Practice Network (2020) Is racism part of our reluctance to localise humanitarian action? Retrieved from: https://odihpn.org/blog/is-racism-part-of-our-reluctance-to-localise-humanitarian-action/ (October 16, 2021)
The Guardian (2021) Matt Hancock appointed UN special envoy to help Covid recovery in Africa. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/oct/12/matt-hancock-appointed-un-special-envoy-to-help-covid-recovery-in-africa (October 16, 2021)
The Guardian (2021) United Nations withdraws Matt Hancock job offer. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/oct/16/united-nations-withdraws-matt-hancock-job-offer (October 16, 2021)
The Telegraph (2021) ‘Jaw-dropping colonial hangover’: fury greets Matt Hancock’s UN Africa role. Retrieved from: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/jaw-dropping-colonial-hangover-fury-greets-matt-hancocks-un/ (October 16, 2021)