Since colonial times, western policy in Africa has operated by wooing the local Big Man and ensuring he hits it off with one's own Big Man. This is then called looking at the Big Picture

National leaders are more accessible in Africa, so I have interviewed several in my time. Uganda's Yoweri Museveni made me chuckle, Chad's Idriss Deby was plain sinister, Congo's Joseph Kabila seemed the perfect consort for a tour of Brussels nightclubs. One man towered above the rest for his modest charm, quiet intelligence and lucidity: Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia's prime minister.

Once a Marxist rebel of the Albanian school, Meles tends to have an invigorating effect on those who meet him. So part of me understands perfectly why Tony Blair chose the Ethiopian capital to deliver a midterm progress report on the Commission for Africa this past week. But another part of me sees his choice of venue as strangely inappropriate for an organisation promising a fresh start to the developed world's dealings with that continent.

The Commission for Africa, or "Blair commission" as we must learn to call it, was launched in February this year at Bob Geldof's urging. The idea was to come up with landmark proposals that Blair could push to the top of the agenda when Britain takes over the presidencies of the G8 and European Union next year. Despite the hype, the commission's ideas are unlikely to be jaw-droppingly original.

We can expect calls for the phasing out of EU and US subsidies and trade barriers that prevent African exports competing on the international market; plus renewed pleas for debt relief, as well as for the co-ordination of national aid programmes that too often cover identical ground. It has been clear for decades what the west needs to do to help Africa. But the cold war - during which foreign powers cultivated African clients whom they believed they could "do business with", however dodgy the leader's human rights record and economic theory - got in the way.

And there's the rub. For Ethiopia strikes me as an example of just such a client state. By courting Meles - named a commissioner and invited to Downing Street earlier this year - Blair is signalling that the logic of the cold war persists. It has simply mutated to meet the imperatives of Bush's "war on terror", which sees Ethiopia, headquarters of the African Union, as a key ally in the fight against Islamist extremism. It lurks behind the beaming smiles and warm handshakes in London and Addis Ababa.

Few would deny that Meles has done well in holding together his huge, desperately poor, ethnically diverse nation. Yet, as anyone who cares to read the Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch websites can attest, Ethiopia is no modern-day utopia.

On the human rights front, the administration stands accused of detention without trial, routine torture and the "disappearance" of prisoners. It is also accused of tolerating repeated assaults on opposition supporters by local officials. It takes a brave man to lead an opposition party in Ethiopia's provinces.

The Ethiopian Free Press Journalists' Association has been closed and what threatens to be a draconian press law is being drafted. Land privatisation, which many analysts believe is a prerequisite if Ethiopia is ever to produce enough food to satisfy her hungry people, is not happening; Meles baulks at such a move, which suggests that his conversion to capitalism is not quite as enthusiastic as he would have foreign donors believe.

My main criticism of the Ethiopian government is that, by refusing to accept the international Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission's ruling on the two countries' contested border in 2002, Addis is preparing the ground for a terrible new war in the Horn.

It would be nice to think Blair is using the opportunity presented by the Addis meeting to press Meles for movement on this and other concerns. But I find it hard to believe he will break with British policy, which has been to pay lip-service to the legality of the border ruling while quietly rewarding Addis's obstinacy with a generous tripling of bilateral aid.

Personalities before policies: western diplomacy has operated on that basis in Africa since the colonial era. Spot the rising African Big Man and make sure your Big Man and he hit it off; once you have forged a Special Relationship, tune out squeals from opposition parties and human rights groups, telling yourself that politics is the art of the possible and that you must look at the Big Picture.

This approach allowed the Americans to kid themselves that Haile Selassie, who believed himself ordained by God, had signed up to parliamentary democracy - and Mengistu Haile Mariam, his ruthless Marxist successor, was a "soft" socialist.

The Commission for Africa was meant to mark a break with the past: relationships with African governments should be based on the nitty-gritty of their policies, not personal chemistry. I don't give a damn if Meles and Blair really "clicked" or were coldly polite. I'd like to know when Ethiopia is going to be able to feed herself, year in, year out. And I'd like to be sure my taxes aren't helping an African regime prepare for yet another war.

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