The Chancellor said that the Government would pay 10 per cent of the cost of poor countries’ debt to the World Bank, starting today with Tanzania, his second stop in his week-long tour of the continent.

Britain would extend this promise to 70 of the world’s most indebted countries for the next ten years, which the Treasury estimates at £1.1 billion.

It is surprising for a Chancellor who prides himself on prudent accounting to take on the cost of dozens of huge loans, but Mr Brown said that this was the exeption that proved the rule.

The reason was the primary school he was visiting in a remote village 300 miles from Dar es Salaam, where none of the final year students can go on to secondary school because their parents cannot afford the fees. As a result of Britain’s new deal, Tanzania will make secondary education free.

When British parents heard that 100 million children in southern Africa could not afford to go to school, Mr Brown said they would give their full support to this use of taxpayers’ money. “I think that most British parents will feel that to deny any child in the world a basic chance at an education is not acceptable in the modern world,” he said.

Almost all of the debt of the poorest 70 nations — about £50 billion — is owed to the IMF, the World Bank and the African Development Bank.

Mr Brown said that he was convinced the IMF would write off its share of the debt by selling or revaluing its gold stocks. Of the rest — about £30 billion — he said that rich nations were not taking enough responsibility.

“Britain is a trailblazer here. It’s a historic step but we want to lead by example,” he said.

Although he did not name America, it is responsible for the largest share — about 20 per cent — of the World Bank’s loans. Mr Brown said that he would push hard for all G7 countries to follow Britain’s lead at their meeting in London next month.

This was not a case of going into the red as most rich nations did, Mr Brown said, but “a tragedy of unpayable debt”.

The money comes from the Department for International Development (Dfid) and is therefore classed as a “public spending commitment” rather than adding to Britain’s debt. The cost to Dfid of paying off Tanzania’s debts over the next ten years — £39.9 million — had already been budgeted for in the latest spending review.

Each indebted country will have to sign an agreement before Britain will take on its share of its World Bank payments, promising that the funds will be directed into health and education. About ten of the 70 most indebted will not qualify because they are in conflict, and more will probably not sign up, Mr Brown said, which is why the cost to Britain ihas been estimated at less than 10 per cent of the loans total.

“We do not wipe out the debt of the poorest countries simply because these debts are not easily paid,” he said. “We do so because people weighed down by the burden of debts imposed by the last generation cannot even begin to build for the next.”

The Tanzanian Government said yesterday that Britain’s decision would help to extend the proportion of children educated to secondary level from 10 per cent to 45 per cent by 2015.

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