Two weeks ago I visited Tanzania as a guest of ActionAid. Tanzania is a country which over the past decade has made significant progress, benefiting from long-term stability and positive year on year growth. Major advances have been made in relation to education and health. However, income inequality remains stark and for too many poverty is a daily reality. There is an urgent need to support the development of a vibrant private sector alongside more effective state institutions and a vibrant civil society. Recent major gas finds if exploited effectively and transparently alongside agricultural reform should be the basis for accelerated growth and provide a new opportunity to tackle the gross inequality which continues to undermine Tanzania’s progress. Britain in the form of DfID and the FCO are important partners for the government of Tanzania with an aid programme of £160m in the next financial year and an increased focus on supporting the development of the private sector. Within 24 hours of my arrival, I was raising the curtain on a world different to anything I, nor the majority of readers of this piece, will have experienced. I was to spend a day and night with a family of Tanzanian farmers in a rural community well outside the capital, Dar es Salaam. The aim of this immersion was to consider the country’s challenges through the lens of a human story rather than the usual series of meetings and project visits.

As I disembarked the ActionAid car, rucksack and sleeping bag in hand I felt a deep sense of trepidation. Alone, other than my translator, in a strange country, about to meet a family living in challenging circumstances who had agreed to host a UK supporter of ActionAid but were to have no knowledge I was a British politician.

The family, which consisted of two adults and 10 children, four under 10 and six grown up as well as several grandchildren, were all sitting outside waiting to greet me. They lived alongside a  small agricultural landholding which they farmed but didn’t own. Over the next 24 hours I collected and cooked the leaves which made up the family’s meals, played football with the younger children, spoke to the parents about their hopes and fears, discussed Britain’s colonial past and today’s global politics, slept in a cramped mud hut which is their home and used a toilet which while spotlessly clean was no more than a hole in the ground, water came from a neighbouring house which allowed the family access to a tap. Water, I was strongly advised not to drink. When darkness fell the only form of light was from the moon and stars and our torches. Despite these monumental challenges their charity and optimism was inspiring as was their strength of dignity, order, mutual respect and love.

So, what are the development policy challenges which a snapshot of the daily realities facing this family and my later visit to a women’s cooperative raise? Some challenges are specific to Tanzania, others are relevant to many developing countries. First, on land there is too often no clarity about ownership rights. This prevents assets being accumulated; leaves vulnerable people exposed to exploitation; and can lead to some more undesirable companies taking advantage of weak land tenure to acquire large tracts of communities’ land. My hosts had no right of tenure and could technically have been evicted at any time.

Another one of these challenges is biofuels. Until recently biofuels were thought to have a central role to play in reducing carbon emissions and contributing to the global fight against climate change. Unfortunately, there is now uncertainty about their impact on the environment and concern at the conduct of some less than scrupulous companies entering this new market. I heard at first hand from a group of villagers who described how a British registered company had exploited local workers, failed to pay adequate levels of compensation for land and hadn’t built promised community facilities. They were angry with the company but now also deeply distrustful of Britain. The lack of a domestic agricultural market, limited skills and no technology meant food production was only for subsistence purposes and therefore constrained the family’s capacity to improve their standard of living. Having to live on a staple diet of cassava and ugali, green leaves and a rice equivalent, meant the younger children were noticeably small for their ages. It is a sad fact that poor nutrition is often the cause of stunted growth among the poorest children in the world. There is an urgent need for the implementation of an integrated land and agricultural reform plan which supports ownership, security of tenure and develops a viable and sustainable domestic market. There is also now a pressing need for a global rethink on the role of biofuels.

During my time with them the father of the family told me he had fallen sick recently and was unable to work for a week. He couldn’t afford medicine and had fallen behind with the farming and therefore could no longer send his children to school because he couldn’t afford the school uniform and books. At one stage he said education didn’t matter but in contrast his wife was adamant that education was the most important priority for the family. It was an interesting clash of views which may be as much about attitude as access to education. The greatest challenges in many developing countries remain how they can achieve universal access to primary education especially in fragile and conflict states while enhancing the quality of teaching and learning to support more young people to stay on and progress into secondary, further and higher education. Over time, I want to stimulate a debate about why we don’t apply our understanding that early intervention in the first five years of a child’s life makes the most difference to our policies in the developing world. If Britain needs sure start, why not Africa?

I also had the opportunity to go to a women’s cooperative which has a core business of harvesting seaweed. This group of entrepreneurial women reinforced my belief in the direct correlation between women’s empowerment and progress in developing countries. The women had not only doubled their income but become leaders in the wider community, fighting for change to improve not only their lives but the lives of their families and neighbours. They spoke movingly of their dreams for a better future for their children and grandchildren.

I will never forget my visit to Tanzania or the family who taught me more than I can ever say about the challenges they face. But their challenges are our challenges. Rather than retreat from our spheres of influence like the EU there are big global issues a confident outward-looking Britain should be providing leadership to address. In a rapidly changing world, after the financial crisis and Arab spring, where 75 per cent of the world’s poorest people now live in middle-income countries how do we ensure growth is both sustainable and reduces inequality? How do we apply Ed Miliband’s call for more responsible capitalism in the UK to the global economy? How do we create a new progressive global covenant between developed, developing and middle income countries which continues to ensure the poorest have access to aid but unlocks sustainability, enterprise and innovation? How can this covenant tackle the big issues of gross inequality of opportunity and income, climate change, unfair trade policy and systematic human rights abuses. What will this mean for a reformed UN? In these tough times how can we win the argument with hard-pressed British taxpayers that honouring our aid and development commitments is socially just but also, in an interdependent world, central to our national interest?

I’m back in the UK now. But my world will never quite be the same again. Amid statistics, summits and speeches, the human face is too often the last not first thing on the agenda. For me the prism through which I will look at these issues has changed forever. At the beginning of the 21^st century we can’t continue to tolerate this level of gross inequality. Can we? To reverse a famous political slogan, no we can’t!

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Ivan Lewis MP is shadow secretary of state for international development