Michael Dynes, left, Africa Correspondent, assesses the challenge facing Tony Blair's new Commission for Africa, and its chances of success.

"Africa's problem can be summed up in a single sentence. Despite its huge size and its population of more than 800 million people, Africa receives less than one half of 1 per cent of the total amount of money invested globally in foreign enterprise.

"Foreign investment amounts to billions of dollars worldwide every year, but time and again multinational companies are choosing to invest in areas like South-East Asia and Latin America instead of Africa.

"And who can blame businesses? If I was a banker, I wouldn't invest in Africa. With the honourable exception of South Africa, and a couple of bright spots in Ghana and Mauritius, the rest of the Continent is a complete disaster and getting worse.

"Back in the 1950s when Ghana was regarded as the leading light of post-colonial Africa, its economy was comparable with South Korea. No-one is making that comparison any more. Africa has a long track record of being a bad place to invest, and it will have to work hard to reverse that bad impression.

"The number one problem is political instability. If you are going to pour hundreds of millions in long-term investment into a water purification plant, you don't want to do it when there is a high risk of an attempted coup, of which there have been nearly 100 across Africa in the last 50 years.

"Problem number two is corruption. Businesses don't want to operate in an environment where people are stealing everything that isn't nailed down. In Africa the most colossal corruption is usually by the ruling families.

"Too often, little of the aid or investment goes into the infrastructure which would create the environment and the conditions for more foreign investment, such as roads and telephones and airports. Instead it ends up in someone's Swiss bank account.

"Other key problems for foreign investors are the lack of transparency in the way things run, and the lack of guarantees that when they make profits they will actually be able to repatriate them out of the country.

"It is not as if businesses can't make a profit when the will is there. Mobile phones have been a spectacular hit in Africa. Nigeria, which has a reputation for corruption even in African terms, has made a huge success of its liquefied natural gas project, and is making millions of dollars in profit exporting it to Southern Europe and the US. President Olusegun Obasanjo wanted to make it work as a showcase project, and it is. So things can work, but its not easy.

"Trade is the first and most important method of sorting out Africa's problem. But there is another major obstacle to this, which is the impact of agricultural subsidies in the EU, the US and Japan.

"Eighty per cent of Africa's population are farmers, so it follows that the only way to get economic growth going in Africa is to make agriculture work.

"Yet here in Johannesburg I can buy a tin of Italian tomatoes cheaper than I can buy locally grown tomatoes, because of the subsidies we give to producers in Europe. African producers cannot compete with the prices of the cheap European products that the developed world dumps here, and that will continue until the West ends its subsidies to its own farmers.

"I think that Tony Blair is right to focus on Africa, and he is genuine. He has got the right people on board, who will come up with sensible ideas. But the problem will yet again be getting the ideas implemented. We have had scores of these commissions over the decades. They always come up with the same solutions: Africa must sort its act out, and the West must play its part. But nothing ever gets done, and Africa gets poorer and poorer.

"Cultural misunderstandings don't help. The West doesn't understand why President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa doesn't tick off President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. But in African eyes Mr Mugabe is a senior statesman, and there is no way that Mr Mbeki could stand up like a cheeky youngster and criticise his elder. The carrot always works better than the stick in Africa.

"The estimates for the amount of foreign aid which has been poured into Africa since the end of the Second World War range from $300 billion to $1 trillion - and there is virtually nothing to show for it. That is a huge amount of money either lost, stolen or misappropriated.

"Now the West is being asked to cough up again, and there is donor fatigue. Western taxpayers quite rightly aren't going to pay up a second time without guarantees that this time it will work."