Blair versus Mbeki? NEPAD, the African Union initiative, is President Thabo Mbeki's three-year-old baby, and the Blair Commission for Africa is nothing but a gauntlet thrown at its struggling, young feet. Discuss.

It's about Blair versus Mbeki. Is Tony Blair jealous of Thabo Mbeki, does he consider him to be a rival? I think he might do, certainly when it comes to Africa. There could be a real tug of war going on between them behind the scenes. They probably haven't even acknowledged it to them-selves yet. Usually, the rivalry exercises itself over Zimbabwe. They're at each other: "You're doing it my way!" "NO, my way's best!" Glazed eyes.

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The "Blair Commission" on Africa. Has a nice ring to it, don't you think? Not half as nice as "the Blair Foundation" will have in due course. You haven't really done anything in public life, been anyone, unless you've had a "Commission" or a "Report" or a "Foundation" named after you.

It was at the end of February that Tony Blair announced that he was setting up "a Commission for Africa to take a fresh look at Africa's past, present and future."

Muffle those groans. I'm sure you're old enough to know that "fresh looks" are a basic tool of government. "It will be a comprehensive assessment," said Mr Blair at his monthly prime ministerial news conference, "of the situation in Africa and policies towards Africa."

He wants his Commission to be "every bit as ambitious" and on the same scale as the landmark report on the North-South poverty divide produced in 1980 by Willy Brandt, the former chancellor of West Germany.

Next year is 25 years since the "Brandt Report". But 2005 also brings several other critical dates that Tony Blair wants to hit with the "Blair Report". In July 2005 Britain hosts the G8 Summit for the leading industrialised countries. There is already a G8 "Action Plan" for Africa on the table. Gathering dust. Britain has the European Union presidency next year, too. Real action to benefit Africa is contained in three little words: Common Agricultural Policy. The continuing failure to get rid of European, American, and Japanese protectionism kills people in Africa. And 2005 marks the 20th anniversary of the Live Aid concert.

It's early May, launch day in London for the 16 new commissioners. He's still crazily unkempt after all these years, even in smart pinstripe. Turning, he looks down the platform at the rest of the panel. There's Prime Minister Blair, there's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, President Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania, Gordon Brown, the British chancellor, Hilary Benn, Britain's secretary of state for international development.

Smiling, our man says, "This doesn't look viably exciting, looking at these six stooges." Viably exciting? Stooges? Typically, he's included himself. Did you know that Bob Geldof is older than Tony Blair? I didn't until the other day. Bob's 52 and Blair's 51. There is something not quite right about that, but I can't put my finger on it.

On the other hand, I've also got that feeling you get when you meet someone from school who was nine months younger than you. They start getting a bit above themselves, trying it on, and you have to remind them that you're older than they are. So behave. Do you think Bob will tell Tony to behave himself if Tony gets out of hand and loses the plot?

Bob Geldof should know that a certain generation that speaks his language is watching him. The Live Aid generation. Don't "effing well" let us down now "you b*****d!"

How did it go? "... Fee-eed the world ... Do they know it's Christmas time ..." 20 years on and it still hurts. 50 million popstar-packed charity copies sold for the 1984 Ethiopian famine. Geldof wrote the song in the back of a taxi. God had this young man's shoulder in a vicelike grip: "You're going nowhere, My son, until you have done this thing for Me." The record, then Live Aid, all in all, the extraordinary, unprecedented, historical mobilisation of the people's will that saved about two million Ethiopian lives.

So, is this it, Bob? Is the big idea now just another "effing" report? Surely you, of all people, can't be asking us to settle for a lovely thick volume, an index, footnotes, tables, maps, diagrams, graphs, figures, references ... "F**k that!"

He wants schoolchildren to have copies written for them, says an aide. Can we all get the kiddies' version, please? I've had it up to here with the adult baloney. I wouldn't mind but it's not as if the bleedin' thing's called "the Geldof Commission".

It's not true that you have to become less radical, even conservative, as you get older. That's a fallacy. But it's not about becoming "immature with age" either. It's about being and doing what the times demand of you.

The average annual Ethiopian income in 1984 was US$190. Today it is US$108. Food production per person is estimated to have fallen from 450 kgs in 1984/5 to 140 kgs in 2002/3. "International aid" still feeds about six million Ethiopians every year. What the f**k's going on?

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According to Prime Minister Zenawi: "We are coming to London to work together with others to create the political will to implement the solutions that we think can help Africa." Every time I think of Mr Zenawi, I ask myself what is the point of a government that cannot ensure food security for its own people. The political will in London seems to be behind "halving poverty by doubling aid". Over the next two years, Britain hopes to allocate 0.4% of its gross domestic income to foreign aid. It was 0.26% in 1997. The United Nations says it should be 0.7%.

How, then, can development money that is already in the pot be made to work harder? There is a clever, interesting idea called the International Finance Facility, which I don't quite understand. Thought up by Chancellor Gordon Brown, it involves raising money to increase aid flows by issuing bonds in the international capital markets that are backed by donors' funding commitments. I think. The best thing about the proposal is that President Bush doesn't like it. South Africa's finance minister, Trevor Manuel, who's a "Blair Commission" member, supports it strongly.

The UN says that, by 2015, the number of people in the developing world who live in extreme poverty ("below a dollar a day") must be halved. This target tops the eight "Millennium Development Goals"--on women, children, health, environment etc--to be achieved by 2015 that every UN member country has signed up to.

As it happens, we're only six months away from the earliest deadline. By 2005 there was supposed to be equal access for girls and boys in primary and secondary education. But, according to one count, 47 low-income countries will not meet that target. 60% of the 113 million children who are not in school are girls.

Putting to one side the millions of pages produced every year by the development establishment, what, exactly, is in the Brandt Report, the G8 Action Plan, the Millennium Development Goals, that Mr Blair does not like?

Who are these people who need to be converted still? And do we want to waste precious time, precious lives, trying to convert them? They are a waste of space. They need to get up, leave the room--and they can shut the door behind them. There is real work to be done--to use aid industry language: "implementation".

Back in February, Mr Blair said that "the issues" went beyond reform of the US and EU farm subsidies, fairer trade and debt relief, there were "big issues in respect of Africa to do with conflict resolution and governance. You look at what is happening in Zimbabwe at the moment, for example." Zimbabwe: the British obsession.

Thabo Mbeki has taken the lead on how Africa should handle the situation in Zimbabwe. It is just as clear who is driving the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad). Nepad is Mbeki's three-year-old baby, and the "Blair Commission" is nothing but a gauntlet thrown at its struggling, young feet.

Here's Blair: "We have been through the Nepad process, the Africa Partnership, which I think has taken us a certain way, but what we really need to do is to bring some of these key questions to a decision point for the G8 and then the wider world."

Glazed eyes. I feel the "Blair Commission" will end up undermining--not boosting or supporting as some commissioners claim--the African Union's Nepad initiative. Tony Blair made his "Africa is a scar on the world's conscience" speech less than a month after the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. "Security" and "oil" issues in Africa are what really dominate American and, therefore, British minds.

But that October 2001 party conference speech was also just four months after Labour's election victory. And it's funny how no one connected with the "Blair Commission" has mentioned that 2005 will mean a British general election year.

Not that I think that "Africa" will be an issue for "the British people"--they have been robbed of the appropriate level of consciousness required for internationalism--but who wants to answer awkward questions like, "Mr Blair, you said you were going to 'do' something about Africa. What about all that stuff about scars?"

The "Blair Commission" reports "next Spring". The British prime minister will be able to swat away the question "What have you done?", because who could possibly disagree with the lovely analysis that the Blair Report is sure to deliver. Tick another box on the electoral things-to-do list. And get one over Mbeki at the same time.

PS: History will forgive us? History won't. It's real important before you embark on Smiley-Colonisation that you realisehow much you hate the people you want to smile back at you. Then you can protect yourself against your own hatred.