The richest countries in the world will never make African poverty history until they also make African corruption history. All credit to Gordon Brown for, in the face of objections from the Germans and the French, persuading the Group of Seven world powers to write off ฃ30billion of Third-World debt. The richest countries in the world have given a break to the poorest countries in the world. But how much good will it do?Since the 1970s, Africa has received an average of $100billion a decade in aid - $100billion!

The West has been throwing money at Africa for decades, and yet the continent remains on its knees. Where has all the money gone? One of the 18 countries which is having its debt written off is Tanzania. This is the same Tanzania that in 2001 received a ฃ3billion debt-relief package from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Shortly after getting the cash, President Benjamin Mkapa bought himself a private jet for ฃ14million. And when Gordon Brown visited Tanzania and announced a further ฃ35million of debt relief, President Mkapa celebrated by buying himself an even fancier plane - for ฃ30million. The stink of corruption in Africa is overwhelming too many African leaders have used aid from the West to build monuments to their colossal vanities.

Another country having its debt written off is Uganda, a wretched place where aid has been diverted from the mouths of the poor to purchase a private plane. Uganda's President, Yoweri Museveni, was one of the first African despots to abuse the goodwill of the West. And to cheat his own people. Karl Ziegler, an expert on Third-World debt and director of the Centre of Accountability and Debt Relief - an organisation designed to ensure that aid goes into the mouths of starving children rather than into Swiss bank accounts - was involved with a deal to write off ฃ30million of Ugandan debt.

Ziegler says that President Museveni was planning to spend US $1million on auditors - the bean counters who would have checked that every penny of the deal was spent wisely. On the advice of Western liberals, anxious not to appear like colonial masters, Museveni dispensed with the auditors and spent the money as he saw fit. A couple of months later the president had a nice new jet that set him back ฃ30million. This is insane!

Another country having its debt written off is Ethiopia, the nation that in many ways started all of this. Live Aid and Band Aid set out to feed the world but also ended up feeding the army of dictator Colonel Mengistu. Food parcels were sold in neighbouring countries and the proceeds are unlikely to have reached those who needed it the most.