Tony Blair's 'Marshall Plan' Visit

Tony Blair's 7 February 2002 visit to Abuja was the third stop on his four-nation 'Marshall Plan for Africa' tour (Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria, Sierra Leone), planned as the political curtain-raiser for the British presidency of the G8 and for the 2002 Kananaskis Summit. Blair was received at the Presidential Villa by Olusegun Obasanjo for a working session that covered three main files: Paris Club debt relief (Nigeria was then carrying about US$28 billion), the formal establishment of the African Union out of the OAU in July of that year, and the Commonwealth's continued suspension of Zimbabwe. Blair and Obasanjo issued a joint communiqué committing to the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), which Obasanjo had co-architected with Mbeki and Wade. The substantive payoff came three years later at Gleneagles in July 2005, when the G8 wrote off US$18 billion of Nigerian Paris Club debt — the largest single debt-relief settlement in African history.