The fact is these same developed nations for years on end have callously abetted the culture of ‘lutocracy’ in Africa through what former Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings in a speech delivered recently in Witwatersrand University, South Africa called ‘the three monkeys of hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil.’
Although the whole Tony Blair-driven idea of canceling debt owed by African nations is timely, much more still needs to be done on the continent in as far as accountability in the use of the concessional loans (tagged aid) is concerned. It is indeed a socio-economic exercise in futility for poor African nations to be given these loans which later end up in private pockets and secret bank accounts in the same developed world from where the funds arose.
Many corrupt and gluttonous African and Third World leaders have opened up secret bank accounts in the developed world against which the ‘keeper’ developed countries have taken little or no concrete action, and these leaders get to enjoy these monies, which they looted from the public coffers of the developing world, with adamant impunity.
With Africa’s total debt standing at a staggering US $300 billion, most African and Third World citizens, born and unborn, have been appallingly yoked to the squalor of poverty and debt-paying as their governments borrow funds year-in and year-out with no hope of ever completing repayment of the same. The issue of debt cancellation is noble, yet will be negatively tainted by the forecasted doubling of debt, which under the same previous terms of lending will not have fully solved the Third World socio-economic malaise. Without the concrete revision of terms of lending and global trade, the African nations will continue to be mired in the vicious cycle of hopelessness and debt. This has occurred even as the issue of unfair trade practices is still being given a wide berth by several of the developed world global trade stakeholders, and the African and Third World farmer languishes under the weight of low prices for their agricultural produce at the world trade arena.
It therefore amounts to a fallacy and an irony that many developed nations come around and lampoon African nations for poor leadership and ‘bad governance,’ yet their surreptitious cash vaults are stashed to the brim with apparently stolen funds. It is widely alleged in Africa that these are the same monies, which they stone-facedly scoop, then give back to the African and Third World countries as ‘aid’ assistance. While developed world protest-diplomacy is apt, especially in cases of official corruption and bizarre and premeditated government ineptitude, it should be backed by action – not mere words of condemnation.
In Kenya alone, each person born and unborn owes US $400 in debt to the international lenders for which the time of completion of repayment is unknown. The United States’ aid to Africa is a paltry 0.16% of its GDP, of which $1.5 billion goes to economic cooperation and emoluments for consultants and $1 billion to food aid. According to USAID, the organization responsible for overseas US ‘aid’ administration through its head Andrew Natsios, the total overseas development assistance from the USA in 2004 was US $ 91.4 billion of which only US $ 3.2 billion went to Africa.
The frequent forcing of policies down the socio-economic throats of African and other developing-world nations has not only posed a threat to their future development aspirations, but also disintegrated their economic fabric as most of the said policies are clearly never in their growth interests.
One example is the much perpetrated Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs), which were done at a time when many African nations such as Kenya were experiencing hard economic times with skyrocketing unemployment levels. As such, a participatory approach should be given to the World Bank and IMF policies being implemented in the Third World to ensure that they benefit the common African and Third World citizen. In this line, such economically oriented and participatory approaches to development as the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) as sponsored by the World Bank Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) should be widely publicized and even taken to the grassroots village level in African countries to ensure that each and every common man and woman has been given a voice in their preparation and implementation.
Despite being rich in fresh water sources, mineral resources as well as reeling in the abundance of fertile soils, many countries in Africa still continue to unashamedly seek humanitarian food assistance year-in and year-out. Others are still experiencing energy deficits yet have huge deposits of radioactive energy sources, as well as abundant and untapped solar and wind opportunities. There should thus be a drive towards the exploitation of these sources of energy. This would not only help in the conservation of forests but also in the preservation of catchment areas. It will also provide enough energy for an industrial revolution currently stifled by broken and incoherent policies.
Investment policies should also be drastically reviewed in Africa. There should be investment laws put in place such that foreign investors willing and able to exploit the nations’ resources are legally bound to fully process these said resources before marketing them abroad. This would ensure that the African nations get value for their produce rather than selling them as raw materials at paltry prices in the international markets and later buying the fully processed products at more than thrice the original price. On page 2 of its economic policy paper ‘The Ten Point Program,’ the National Resistance Movement of Uganda notes that “while 200-500 years ago African slaves were being exchanged for beads and trinkets by the African chiefs of the day, today African coffee, cotton, gold, copper, oil or uranium are being exchanged for toys, wigs, perfumes, whisky or Mercedes Benzes…. In fact, this tendency is being reinforced and the gap between the developed economies of the world and ours is ever widening.”
The ‘Ten Point Program’ further states that “while a hundred years ago we possessed, at least, enough technology to extract iron from its ore and use it to make agricultural tools (e.g. hoes and pangas), now even these most primitive tools must be sold to us by foreign firms, and we must, in order to get them, pay in precious resources, many of them exhaustible (e.g. copper, gold, oil where available, iron, uranium, etc).”
The policy paper asserts that “there is, therefore, a qualitative regression…what some people call “development.” African countries should diversify their global trading partners and venture into the Asian Tiger economic waters. These countries will not only give the continent a fair trading platform but also serve as blueprints for their development prospects. The fact that these emerging economies had very little resources years back but are currently causing economic waves in the international trading platform should serve as a positive pointer for the African and other Third World nations.
The current salient economic issues in Africa and the Third World include unemployment, poverty and food insecurity, inadequate energy, socio-economic gender disparities, illiteracy, inadequate health facilities, and inaccessibility to adequate clean water, among other brutal deficiencies. Only Africans themselves can tackle these issues, as they know what their own shortfalls and problems are and the ways in which they can appropriately solve them.
The solutions however should be modified to suit the dynamism in the continent. These should be systematically formulated to spur growth and development in these disparaged parts of the world. As Mr. John Maliti, the Kenya Private Sector Foundation Chairman advocates, only by developing their own version of the Marshall Plan, as did post-WWII Europe, will Africa and the Third World be able to see concrete change in their development prospects.
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