"Ignore Africa at our peril"

Mr Loughton chaired the Africa Day conference at St Mary's Church and gave a keynote speech at the beginning.

He said how appropriate it was to hold this event at St Mary's Church, which had come about on the back of the importance of Shoreham as a maritime town which built ships and traded with the wider world.

"Yet again, Shoreham and Adur have punched above their weight with this important event, showing how responsive local people are to the problems of poverty, climate change and disease as they affect the planet in far distant countries.

"It is folly to ignore the problems of Africa, where half of the population live on less than two dollars a day, and Africa's share of world trade has slipped from six per cent 25 years ago to just two per cent now.

"It is difficult to imagine what possesses a young African man to get in an open boat, to pay all the money he has to the modern version of a slave trader, to risk his life on a journey of 1,000 miles across the Atlantic in the hope of stumbling ashore on a European beach.

"In today's globalised world, the effects of this knock on to the UK and the West, and our future is inextricably tied up with the future survival and progress of the continent of Africa.

"Events such as this bring the scale of the problem we face home to local people and give them the tools to put pressure on governments and multi-national companies and agencies to take the problem seriously."

Kenyan resident Peter Odero, Karam Mofid, founder of Globisation for the Common Good Initiative, Dapo Owywole, executive director for the Centre for African Policy and Peace Strategy in London, Wayne Green, company director of Adur-based Global Affairs Ltd, and Vivenie Mugunga, founder of Sussex charity rYico, were the other speakers at the day-long conference, which also celebrated African culture, food and music.

Other events during One World Week included an Asia afternoon, a Fair Trade fashion show, workshops for children, a concert by the gospel choir Black Voices (see review on page 31) and a Tanzanian afternoon at The Convent in Buckingham Road.