Milestone

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher Source: eastandard.net

“In politics if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman”.
by the “Iron Lady”; well, she also called Nelson Mandela (Madiba) a terrorist!

 

13 October 1925 to April 8 2013

Below is her reference to agriculture when she visited Kenya in January of 1988 during the reign of former President of Kenya, DanielMoi.

Mr. President, your country's success is due, above all, to Kenya's own efforts, but we in Britain have been proud to help. Since 1979, we have committed £173 million to helping Kenya, concentrating on your chosen priority areas of agriculture and communications and meeting the need for jobs outside the big centres of Nairobi and Mombasa, and today, I am pleased to announce a further £20 million pounds of balance of payments support linked to your IMF programme (applause); and we have written-off nearly seventy million pounds worth of repayments under previous aid loans. All our aid to Kenya is now in the form of grants (applause).

First, the crucial importance of a strong and sound agriculture. Your policies of help to the small independent farmer have been strikingly successful. They have enabled you to develop and diversify your exports and you have been able not only to feed the Kenyan people, even during the 1984 drought, but to provide the food needed to feed others less skilful and less fortunate than you yourselves. Kenya's example should encourage Europe, North America and Japan to reduce the excessive subsidies which we give to our own agriculture which lead to unwanted surpluses. If we could do that, then Kenya's success story could be strengthened and repeated more widely in Africa.

REST IN PEACE

Prepared by Editor-in-Chief, AJFAND