Re: [A-List] African Debt Revolt

["Patrick Bond" <pbond@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/DI28Dj01.html
> Four years later:
> The East African (Nairobi)
> January 25, 2006
> By Philip Ngunjiri
> With a $201b debt, Africa will never end poverty, says Sachs
> The director of the Millennium Project, Prof Jeffery Sachs, has asked
> Africa to repudiate its $201 billion debt if developed countries fail to
> cancel it. Describing the debts as "unaffordable" Prof Sachs, who is also 
> an
> advisor to the UN said: "If they won't cancel the debts, I would suggest
> obstruction by yourselves."

We do need to keep an eye on Sachs, thanks Henry for that. Just for the 
record, the quotes Philip Ngunjiri reported on below were originally 
broadcast on BBC in mid-2004. I fear Sachs said nothing new in Nairobi, 
consistent with the fading of the UN as a site to challenge power, given how 
strongly the US power grab has been the last year or so there. When my 
school of development studies celebrated its 50th anniversary 15 months ago, 
Sachs gave a talk by satellite where he recorded how none of the African 
leaders in Addis in mid-2004 gave his repudiation message any thought.

The serious work on debt cancellation won't come from African nationalists, 
*especially* in Pretoria (who continues to heartily promote the IMF, hence 
their 'subimperial' function), but instead from Jubilee Africa and the 
various labour/community/feminist movements who have been protesting the 
debt for a couple of decades now. Below is a fairly typical line of argument 
that they made in 2001, well ahead of the belatedly enlightened Sachs and 
most others, on debt, HIPC and PRSPs.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3869081.stm

BBC News July 6, 2004

Africa 'should not pay its debts'

A special adviser to the United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan has
said African countries should refuse to repay their foreign debts.

Mr Annan's economic adviser Jeffrey Sachs first called on developed
countries to cancel Africa's debts.

But failing that, he said Africa should ignore its $201bn (£109bn) debt
burden.

Economic analysis, he said, had shown that it was impossible for Africa to
achieve its development goal of halving poverty if it had to repay the
loans.

"The time has come to end this charade," he said.

"The debts are unaffordable. If they won't cancel the debts I would suggest
obstruction; you do it yourselves."

'A serious response'

"Africa should say: 'thank you very much but we need this money to meet the
needs of children who are dying right now so we will put the debt servicing
payments into urgent social investment in health, education, drinking water,
control of aids and other needs,'" he told the BBC's World Business Report.

Mr Sachs insisted that such a response was serious and responsible,
providing that the money was used transparently and channelled only into
urgent social needs.

And he denied that it would bar African countries from accessing money from
the capital markets in the future.

"They won't be able to access those markets anyway until the debt is
forgiven," he explained, adding that there is no reason why they shouldn't
be able to borrow again provided the forgiveness was negotiated in a
cooperative manner.

Mr Sachs is special adviser to Kofi Annan on global anti-poverty targets.

Reluctance He made his comments at a conference on the eve of a summit of
the heads of state of the African Union in Ethiopia.

He called on the developed world to double aid to Africa to $120bn a year in
order to meet commitments made in 1970.

There is some sympathy in some of the rich donor countries for the idea of
debt cancellation.

The British Chancellor of the Exchequer or finance minister Gordon Brown,
did float the idea before the recent summit of the G8 major powers in the
United States, although there has been no decision and some creditor
countries do have a history of reluctance on debt relief issues.

But none would be likely to welcome a unilateral decision by the poor
countries themselves simply to stop paying their debts, which are owed
mainly to international organisations such as the World Bank and to rich
country governments.

***

Jubilee South's Pan-African Declaration on Poverty Reduction Strategy 
Programmes
The Kampala Statement, 12 May 2001

Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers:
Structural Adjustment Programmes in disguise

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have produced their 
Poverty Reduction Strategy Programmes (PRSPs) within the context of 
corporate globalisation. This process is being driven by and for the giant 
transnational corporations (TNCs) and global financial forces. These utilise 
the economic, political and military powers of their governments, and the 
World Bank, IMF and World Trade Organisation (WTO) to impose policies on the 
South and to restructure and run the world to serve their interests.
         These forces have led to the enrichment of the corporations and 
their 'share-holders,' as well as small elites in the South--to the heavy 
cost of the vast majority of people of the world. The World Bank and IMF 
have found it necessary to impose PRSPs onto the most impoverished countries 
because the intertwined processes of enrichment and impoverishment have led 
to growing international resistance to the forces, aims and effects of 
globalisation.
         Social organisations and popular movements across the world have 
come out against structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) in their various 
guises, particularly as based on the feminisation of adjustment to the 
further detriment of women and children. Our campaigns have exposed the use 
of debt as a deliberate mechanism utilised by the World Bank and IMF to 
enforce the implementation of ever harsher structural adjustment programmes 
that are wreaking havoc across the world.
         As a result, the World Bank and IMF are facing a deepening crisis 
of legitimacy. Thus they have introduced PRSPs mainly as a public relations 
exercise to demonstrate a supposedly new-found concern for the poverty in 
the poorest countries of the South, and to prove that they have a genuine 
desire to see the people of these countries 'participating' in finding 
solutions to their poverty.
         But we are not fooled! Our sharing of experiences over the days of 
this workshop have strengthened our common understandings. We are clear that 
the PRSPs represent nothing other than yet another attempt by the World Bank 
and the IMF to continue imposing their structural adjustment programmes on 
the people of our countries. In fact, the PRSPs will result in an even more 
comprehensive control by the IMF and World Bank--not only over financial and 
economic policies but over every aspect and detail of all our national 
policies and programmes. This will entrench the continuation of IMF and 
World Bank control over our countries, and contribute to the continuation of 
the global power relations, in which the rich overwhelmingly concentrated in 
the North dominate the South and the whole world.
         In this context, and on the basis of the long, deep and painful 
experiences of SAPs in our countries, we reject:

         . SAPs in any form or with any cosmetic 'adjustments';
         . PRSPs as the latest version of structural adjustment;
         . HIPC initiative as debt 'relief';
         . all SAP-HIPC-PRSP conditionalities in order to be granted debt 
'relief';
         . 'relief' of only a portion of debt and continued repayment of 
the remaining debt which will simply ensure continued control and 
domination;
         . any attempt to use our organisations to legitimise structural 
adjustment, HIPCs, PRSPs or debt 'relief';
         . any further role or interference of the World Bank or IMF in our 
countries; and
         . any further loans to finance HIV-Aids programmes which only 
serve to further indebt our countries, which increase our dependence on the 
institutional finance institutions, while millions of our people continue to 
suffer and die in the pandemic in our countries.

On the basis of our review in this workshop of a number of experiences of 
PRSPs in countries in Africa (and Latin America) and on the basis of 
in-depth analysis and wide-ranging discussion, we note that:

         . PRSPs are located within the IMF and World Bank macro-economic 
framework and this is not open for debate. The poverty programmes are 
expected to be consistent with the neo-liberal paradigm including 
privatisation, deregulation, budgetary constraints and trade and financial 
liberalisation. Yet these have exacerbated economic and social crises in our 
countries.
         . They focus only on internal factors and ignore the role of 
international/global factors and forces in creating economic crises and 
poverty in our countries.
         . The only aspects of our realities that are open to consultation 
are those 'outside' the macro-economic realm, and even the realisation of 
these is actively contradicted by the requirements and constraints of the 
macro-economic prescriptions.
         . The neo-liberal paradigm is also not acceptable because it fails 
to explicitly locate programmes to tackle poverty and subordination within 
effective gender equity perspectives and gender frameworks. Mere gender 
'mainstreaming' is totally insufficient as a remedy.
         . The World Bank and IMF are manoeuvering to regain their 
legitimacy by offering poverty 'reduction' and debt 'relief' whereas we 
demand full release from all debt bondage and the total eradication of 
poverty.
         . These so-called poverty programmes have been imposed on 
countries in a manner which ignores and replaces existing anti-poverty and 
national development programmes. As such, they are an external intervention 
with little or no regard for national dynamics, and are an unacceptable 
intrusion. But they cannot easily be ignored given that countries have to 
implement these programmes as an additional conditionality even for the much 
criticised HIPC debt 'relief.'

The experiences of the functioning of PRSPs in our countries raise a number 
of additional concerns with regard to the involvement of organisations of 
civil society:

         . The PRSPs are not based on real people's participation and 
ownership, or decision-making. To the contrary, there is no intention of 
taking civil society perspectives seriously; but to keep participation to 
mere public relations legitimisation;
         . The lack of genuine commitment to participation is further 
manifested in the failure to provide full and timeous access to all 
necessary information, limiting the capacity of civil society to make 
meaningful contributions.
         . The PRSPs have been introduced according to pre-set external 
schedules which in most countries has resulted in an altogether inadequate 
time period for an effective participatory process.
         . In addition to all the constraints placed on governments and 
civil society organisations in formulating PRSPs, the World Bank and IMF 
retain the right to veto the final programmes. This reflects the ultimate 
mockery of the threadbare claim that the PRSPs are based on 'national 
ownership.'
         . An additional serious concern is the way in which PRSPs are 
being used by the World Bank and IMF, both directly and indirectly, to 
co-opt NGOs to 'monitor' their own governments on behalf of these 
institutions.

In some instances, notably in those countries in which governments have not 
been open to civil society participation or have not had poverty and 
development on the agenda for discussion, the PRSPs initially appeared to 
open up a space for civil society organisations to engage their governments. 
However, this has not achieved the desired effect of challenging structural 
adjustment. Furthermore, many organisations have invested so much energy in 
the PRSP processes that they have been distracted from their work in 
opposing SAPs and HIPCs and campaigning for debt cancellation. The lesson we 
have learnt is that we need to return to our own agendas and reinvigorate 
and further strengthen our engagement and work with people at the 
grassroots. We as African civil society organisations need to:

         . intensify our efforts to expose to the people in our countries, 
and the world, the inter-linked aims and effects of SAPs, HIPCs and PRSPs, 
and the strategic purposes of the World Bank and the IMF;
         . mobilise our people and link up with our allies in the South, 
and partners in the North, for immediate and total cancellation of our 
external debts without external conditionalities;
         . proactively engage with our governments on issues as determined 
by our agendas and on the basis of genuine participation and popular 
empowerment within our own societies, communities and cultures;
         . mobilise to encourage and push our governments to stand together 
and repudiate the debt;
         . mobilise our people to challenge and change the global economic 
system through campaigns and actions to shut down the World Bank and IMF and 
to stand up to other forces, including the WTO, Northern governments such as 
the EU (through the Cotonou Agreement) and the US (through AGOA), as well as 
their TNCs;
         . mobilise our peoples to oppose the ruling elites who are 
implementing structural adjustment programmes and further entrenching 
neo-liberal policies in our countries.

We call upon our peoples to develop further--and deepen through intensified 
analysis, discussion and full participation--our own democratic, 
people-centered, gender equitable and environmentally sustainable national, 
regional and continental alternatives as the basis for a united African 
challenge to the current oppressive, exploitative and destructive global 
system.

Participants:

African Organisation on Debt and Development
African Women's Economic Policy Network
Africa Trade Network (Southern Africa)
Alternative Information and Development Center (South Africa)
Associacao para Desenvolvimento Rural de Angola (Angola)
Asapsu (Cote d'Ivoire)
BEACON (Nairobi)
Botswana Council of Churches
Catholic Commission for Justice & Peace (Malawi)
Center for International Studies (Nicaragua)
Civil Society for Poverty Reduction (Zambia)
CMID (Ghana)
CONGAD (Senegal)
Divida (Mozambique Debt Group)
Ecumenical Support Services for Economic Transformation (South Africa)
Gender and Trade Network (Southern Africa)
Peace Humanius (Cameroon)
International South Group Network (Southern Africa)
Jubilee 2000 Angola
Jubilee 2000 Cameroon
Jubilee 2000 Nigeria
Jubilee 2000 Senegal
Jubilee 2000 Zambia
Jubilee South Africa
Jubilee South (Africa)
Karios EUROPA
Kenya Debt Relief Network
Ledikasyon pu Travayer (Mauritius)
Malawi Economic Justice Network
Mwelekeo wa NGO (MWENGO, Southern Africa)
Southern African Peoples Solidarity Network
Southern and Eastern African Trade, Information and Negotiation Initiative
Tanzania Coalition on Debt and Development
Tanzania Gender Networking Programme
T.E.I.A Mozambique
ActionAid (Uganda)
World Council of Churches
Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development
YWCA Kenya


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