Last week, along with a group of about 40 (mostly Africans in Britain) I was a guest at a very beautiful stately guest house, Cumberland Lodge, amidst the luscious green of the picturesque English country side near the Windsor Castle, one of the many palaces of the English crown dotted across the United Kingdom. It is not far from London, if the Lagos -like traffic congestion allows you, but it is a very different and serene place, away from the concrete jungle and human automatons that London is fast becoming.

We were joking among ourselves with some of the other Africans in our group that these Basungus really do not know what a village is. There is electricity, pipe borne water, telephone (though the mobile connection was epileptic, maybe deliberately so to preserve the quiet atmosphere), good tarred roads, some of them connecting just fields or a few houses. There is even internet service for God's sake. With all these in Africa it qualifies to be the nation's capital! Anyway wealth and poverty like urban and rural divide, are merely relative.

But our purpose for invading the tranquil 'village' was not tourism but a consultative meeting of Africans in Britain under the auspices of the Royal Africa Society (RAS). The aim was to find ways and means of making Africans living in the United Kingdom to dialogue among themselves, build some consensus and devise strategies to make themselves more effective players in the affairs of their host community, Britain. People came from different walks of life and originally from different regions of Africa: business, academia, media, NGO and others.

The immediate background to the meeting (and sponsors of the gathering) is the Blair Commission for Africa. It was part of its consultation with different African constituencies. However both the RAS (under its new Africaphile Director, Richard Dowden ) and Africans working with it were clear that the meeting was about wider issues of Africans in Britain. To the extent that the Blair Commission came into it, it is merely as a strategic entry point for Africans in Britain to influence British policy towards Africa.

If the sole object of the meeting was about Blair's commission I doubt if many of the Africans there would have bothered at all. I know I wouldn't have. This because my view of the commission has been clear from the start. I do not think that we need another report on Africa's condition, we have enough gory details around. What Africa needs is not another bonanza for consultants and bureaucrats to feed off our misery but action to remedy the situation. Africa does not need new promises but fulfilment of old ones both those we made to ourselves and the ones others made to us.

I do not think that the Blair commission will make any difference to Africa in spite of the plenty of good will that it may generate because of Blair's presidency of both the European Union and the G8 in 2005. It is clear that Blair wants to showcase Africa but at a time when his international credibility (as a result of his reactionary cheering of Bush and amoral lack of remorse) is in tatters. Who will listen to him? Even if they do how many will believe him?

But in spite of my reservations I see the British joint presidency of these key multilateral institutions as providing opportunity for engagement by a number of civil society activists in Britain. The first beneficiaries of this will be the big British international NGOs in the broad development, humanitarian and conflict resolution lobbies. Their activities and priorities are often shaped by humanitarian emergencies (on which they feed) and the policies of the day so they will make extra miles from Blair's showcasing of Africa.

Another set of actors will be African organisations who are a bit visible in Britain and could engage in more guilt tripping of their fellow middle class liberals and thereby gain more resources and/or recognition as a result of the Africa euphoria during Blair's dual presidency. Even African journalists and British journalists with a focus on Africa will find that they are in more demand.

But if thoughtfully and strategically worked out the greatest potential of the Blair Commission could be to renew the so far untapped (beyond individual remittances) potential of the huge African Diaspora in the United Kingdom to become effective players at various policy levels. They have been around for a long time. They are in Britain but many do not feel part of it. Consequently the British government makes policies about Africa with little or no input from this constituency. And worse still African governments relate to the British government as if they do not have people in Britain.

The way some of these Diaspora organisations behave may also make one doubt where their feet are, whether in Africa and Britain. Some of them think because they are in the Diaspora they know best, the same arrogant attitudes they criticise Europeans about. Others think they should have the first and last say on any thing related to Africa and Africans without any mandate to do so from anybody. Still many take British government or NGO money and proclaim their independence! Another miserable lot proclaim revolution in Africa without the slightest idea of the conditions our peoples live in and are confronting. These kinds of posturing must stop.

Imagine the insult of Blair calling African leaders to advise him on Africa. Would an African leader set up a commission on Europe and ask European Presidents and Prime Ministers to serve in it? In the unlikely event that they say yes would you imagine such European leaders arriving in such an African capital without previous briefings from his or her own nationals and the EU intelligence, business , media, diplomatic, NGO and other sources. Would they be in Africa without meeting their nationals who are in that country? Yet this is what is happening with the Blair commission.

To the best of my knowledge Bob Geldof , with all his outbursts and outlandish ways, has been the only commissioner actively seeking engagement of Africans in the work of the commission. He has a track record of speaking truth to power internationally on global poverty, debt and suffering of the third world but Africa in particular. He often robs people the wrong way and sometimes comes across as crying more than the bereaved. He is also too hopeful about the Commission but at least he offers an entry point.

Africans in the Diaspora must learn not to throw the baby away with the birth water. They must engage as British residents and citizens, but more than that work in concert with African groups in Africa to engage the African leaders and others participating in the commission. If they wish to shave our head it should not be behind our backs.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa ([email protected] or [email][email protected])

* Please send comments to [email protected]