The Spectator’s Notes | 9 July 2005

What a scramble for Africa. A full-page advertisement in Monday’s Guardian, rather cautiously worded, said that its signatories ‘supported the overall aims’ of those lobbying the G8 leaders and recognised ‘the complexities of the challenge in hand, but commit ourselves to asking our leaders to make positive and practical steps forward to help lift millions out of extreme poverty’. They were leading business people, and their names were splashed across the map of Africa, in varying sizes. Thus the important words ‘Niall FitzGerald KBE’ were so large that they stretched almost from coast to coast, cutting through what look to me like Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi. Two names higher up, ‘Sly Bailey’ filled the whole of Zaire, while ‘Sir Richard Branson’, I am glad to say, was stuck in the Sahara, and ‘Peter Bazalgette’, whose contribution to civilisation is Big Brother, clung precariously to the Egyptian coast. It looked strangely old-fashioned, as if these potentates were staking their claim to great swaths of the Dark Continent.