Drop the Debt

Ousmane Sembène, “the Senegalese-born ‘father of African cinema’,” explains why he believes Live8 is fake.

Wednesday June 8, 2005

The toughest fight we engaged in was the struggle against apartheid, and many people in Europe joined, supported that fight, and some of them were gunned down. I think what we need is goodwill because now our struggle is harder because it is an economic struggle. And now Europe is organising itself. So I think there needs to be a rupture between Africa and Europe, and all the international laws being conceived here in the west have to be revisited and changed. Just one case in point, now European countries are running into problems with China because of T-shirts. What did China do? China’s flooding their markets with T-shirts. But last century, France and England bombed Shanghai – they took weapons and invaded them. They can no longer do that because China has organised itself; and Vietnam has organised itself. That is what we lack back in Africa: we have been subjugated so much that all we can do is beg, and some even think what we are going through is a comedy.

Then there is the issue of cotton. During slavery, negroes were in the cotton fields. Everybody knew about that. Now that they are not forcing us to make cotton, we make cotton and they don’t want it. What should we do? I mean, even our leaders have failed to build factories to transform that cotton for our clothing. We could make any kind of material that would be even better than what is made here, but we wait for everything to come from European industry. They are selling us rags. And everywhere you go in Africa, in the big cities, you would think that you were in a Salvation Army store. They have even created an NGO whose role is to sell us second-hand clothes. I think the youth need to hear these stories. The struggle continues.

BG: That leads beautifully into my next question. What do you think of the big campaigns going on now in Britain: Make Poverty History, Live 8, Hear Africa 05? Big initiatives to make people aware and to maybe give money.

OS: I think they’re fake, and I think African heads of state who buy into that idea are liars. The only way for us to come out of poverty is to work hard. Poverty means begging throughout the world. I know your prime minister is spearheading that kind of campaign. A few years ago, the British army was in Sierra Leone – were they there to fight against poverty? It’s a mistake, it’s a lie. But it’s up to Africans to know that, and I think we have to start that revolution back home.

BG: Well, let’s see if that hits the newspapers tomorrow. How much do you want to bet it won’t?

The New Statesman has been pursuing this line of questioning at least since last week. Unfortunately, the tight asses only allow you to read one article a day which is inconvenient for forming an immediate, overall opinion of their coverage. Considering their fees, it doesn’t matter to them what my poor self thinks about it.

Why Oxfam is failing Africa
Katharine Quarmby
Monday 30th May 2005

Inside the Make Poverty History movement, there is a growing fear that its aims are being diluted and taken over by the government. Fingers are being pointed at Oxfam. Katharine Quarmby reports

In just over a month’s time, up to 200,000 people will converge on the G8 summit in Scotland for a rally organised by Make Poverty History. This will be one of the high points of the 2005 campaign to draw attention to the plight of Africa and to redraft the political agenda of the wealthy nations. Make Poverty History, a coalition of roughly 450 non-governmental organisations, has on one level been spectacularly successful, drawing in celebrities as diverse as Nelson Mandela, Claudia Schiffer and Dawn French. But inside the movement there is discontent. Fears are growing that MPH has been co-opted by new Labour. The finger is being pointed at Oxfam, the UK’s biggest development organisation, for allowing the movement’s demands to be diluted and the message to become virtually indistinguishable from that of the government.

Campaigners welcome Africa debt deal

Sarah Left
Wednesday June 8, 2005

The announcement from the US signalled only a deal on debt owed to the World Bank and African Development Bank, not the IMF, they said. In addition, only around 15 African states would initially meet the conditions imposed by rich nations for debt relief, and some heavily indebted countries, such as Nigeria, were not eligible at all.

[…]

It was not immediately clear whether the single announcement of increased US aid – £370m targeted for famine relief in Ethiopia and Eritrea – was new money, or simply an allocation from the existing US aid budget, the agencies said. Bush aides said they believed the president would announce further aid.

Africa Action Rejects White House Announcement on Aid to Africa

Salih Booker, Executive Director of Africa Action, said, “Today’s announcement from the White House on new aid to Africa is a sham. The amount of money proposed ($674 million) is meager compared to what debt cancellation would enable African countries to do for themselves. Furthermore, this is not a new commitment – this money has already been approved by Congress. Once again the Bush Administration seeks to promote a “compassionate conservative” image by re-packaging old money for Africa, and once again greater scrutiny reveals this image to be disingenuous.”

Africa Action today condemned the ongoing failure of the U.S., UK and other rich countries to reach agreement on debt cancellation for impoverished countries. Marie Clarke Brill, Director of Public Education & Mobilization at Africa Action, said, “Today’s announcement on humanitarian assistance risks distracting attention from the urgent priority of debt cancellation. Unless Africa’s debts are canceled, all new aid will simply flow back out of Africa in the form of debt service payments. The debt crisis will be on the G-8 agenda again in July, and a new deal must be agreed for 100% debt cancellation for at least 50 impoverished nations in Africa and elsewhere, without harmful economic conditions attached.”

“The food aid, of course, subsidizes war.”

– – Paul C. Roberts

UN warns of new war in Horn of Africa

Observers agree that, while Eritrea holds the moral high ground, Ethiopia has far better relations with the west. It is strategically important and hosts the African Union. Meles Zenawi, prime minister, is courted by the international community and was appointed by Tony Blair, UK prime minister, to the Commission for Africa. Last year Britain tripled aid to Ethiopia.

50 Years Is Enough

Africa Needs Debt Cancellation, Not More IMF Programs

Debt is what subjects African countries to the mandates of the IMF and World Bank. Debt is what diverts resources from health and education spending. And debt is what inhibits productive investment. Any plan to benefit Africa must include comprehensive debt cancellation for sub-Saharan Africa.

The external debt burden of sub-Saharan Africa has increased by nearly 400% since 1980, when the IMF and World Bank began imposing their “structural adjustment programs.”

IMF/World Bank “debt relief” for poor and indebted countries is a sham

The IMF program for helping poor countries that are deeply in debt was, until recently, called the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF). Last year, under fire for a program poorly run, the Fund changed the name to Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF). This program is operated in conjunction with the World Bank’s Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) Initiative.

The purpose of PRGF/HIPC is to provide some debt relief — that is, to cancel part of the debts — for poor countries that have no hope of paying back their foreign debt and for whom debt payments are draining their economy.

However, the debt relief afforded by PRGF/HIPC is very modest, and will leave most poor countries paying nearly as much as they currently do. Under the plan, many countries find that while the absolute amount of their debt may decline, only about 15 countries will see the amounts they actually pay affected meaningfully.

As Joe Hanlon, a Jubilee 2000 UK analyst, explains, “Of the $207 billion HIPC country debt, approximately $100 billion is not being serviced — mainly with the agreement of the IMF and World Bank … . This means the Bank and Fund have already admitted that this money will never be paid. So the $100 billion now on offer is only equivalent to the money that it is already accepted will never be paid — in effect this much debt can be written off without real cost since it would never have been paid.”

Compounding the problem, the price of receiving debt relief under the PRGF/HIPC program is implementing a carefully supervised structural adjustment program for three years — even though structural adjustment programs worsen poverty.

The IMF and the World Bank should use their existing resources to fully cancel the debts owed them by the poorest countries — without any structural adjustment conditions attached. This is something they are perfectly able to do, as Harvard Professor Jeffrey Sachs and many others have shown.

3 million reasons to act for Africa

Kevin Watkins
International Herald Tribune

If current trends continue over the next decade, the region will miss the millennium goals by an epic margin. On our estimates, there will be three million more child deaths in 2015 than there would be if the millennium target were met. By 2015 sub-Saharan Africa will account for two in every three child deaths in the world.