A TEXT PRESENTED AT THE PRE-LAUNCH OF GLOBAL
CAMPAIGN AGAINST POVERTY IN NIGERIA COMMEMORATING
THE AFRICAN INDEPENDENCE DAY
A Call for Action
Today is a very significant day in Africa. The
Africa Independence Day celebration more than any
other event is a reminder to all that Africa has
come a long way in her walk to ensure freedom,
equality, justice and economic prosperity for
millions of her people. Africa as a Continent
extends from Cairo to Cape Town, from Cape Town
to Addis Ababa, from Addis Abba to Lagos. It is
also home to one-fifth of the world population.
As we celebrate this day set aside by nationalist
Pan-Africanists in 1963 that fought to ensure
independence for the African people, we should
reflect on our past and strategize for the future
On May 25 1963, when the leaders of the old
Organisation of African Unity (OAU) met in Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia and took the decision to mark the
day, it was a re-affirmation of their unfailing
faith and belief in a strong future for the
beloved Continent, Africa. Though more than four
decades has passed since then, new challenges
have continued to emerge, with the future of
millions of Africans hanging in the balance as it
grapples with several development issues.
Forty-two years ago, the major challenge before
Africa was colonialism of the Western imperialist
powers that converted Africa into their satellite
states across the Atlantic, from whence they
stole resources to develop their cities. Today,
the colonial days are over, a new form of
colonialism has emerged (neo-colonialism or its
new variant - GLOBALIZATION with its attendant
impacts on development processes in Africa. Even
though expressed differently from territorial
domination of the past, the new imperialism use
the economic instruments of debt burden, unfair
trade policy, tied aid, economic models and
control of internal political mechanism to hold
Africa down.
At the root of these mechanisms that excercebate
under-development is the higher goal of ensuring
that Africa's development process is stalled by
any means necessary.
Where do we go from here?
Across Africa today are the grim realities of
poverty, under-development, lack of
infrastructures, low capacity of the people to
develop, hunger and disease. These outcomes are
the resultant effects of structural poverty,
pattern engineered by the neo-colonialists to
maintain their dominant role in the internal
affairs of African states.
The debt profile of the African countries which
is over $300 billion have risen to an all time
high to such an extent that experts now conclude
unequivocally that it would take over a century
to get the Continent out of the woods. The
logical implications of this development are that
four generations of Africans yet unborn would
remain in debt bondage to the Western powers.
Another important dimension to this is that
Africans may end up in eternal slavery, because
it is not even possible to pay back these debts.
Each passing day, the future of the African
people becomes bleaker than ever. It is not
getting better at all as a walk across the
streets of any African city, town or hamlet
confirms this.
But in the midst of all this, many have asked the
question: how did we get to this sorry state of
affairs? What went wrong? Is Africa a perverted
continent? This huge question carries with it
huge responsibilities. It is central to the
question of development in a beleaguered
Continent.
Three answers may suffice on this issue. One, the
colonial powers raped Africa of her invaluable
resources (human and material) for over three
centuries and this left her in such a state that
recovery was almost impossible. Two, the
independence era in Africa was such an
arrangement that never encouraged a people-driven
leadership to move the new African states to
higher goals of public good, except in a few
cases, the leaderships were more or less a
continuum from the past, hence the emergence of
neo-colonialism. The colonialists who cloned
their image to uphold their legacy contrived the
leadership structure in Africa. In places where
true leadership drive by the masses tried to
emerge, they were cut short through internal
collusion of the elites.
The third point is that the kind of leadership
cloned by the West naturally became involved in
activities that promoted the economic and
socio-political interests of the West, resulting
in the contraption of dubious debts and
commitments that are as doubtful as they come.
With passage of time, Africa is at a crossroads
with a huge debt overhang, under-development and
poverty. With the active connivance of the
countries known as highly industrialized
countries, several unethical practices thrive to
ensure that Africa remains on the lower rung of
development.
Nigeria, for instance, a home to 1 out of every 5
African is said to have a debt profile of over 34
billion USD. By the logic of extension, Nigeria's
debt overhang will remain a stumbling block to
her development for over a century to come. Why?
The rules of the game as set by the Western
creditor nations such that these debts are
continuously rescheduled. Every year, the
government is forced to set aside a substantial
part of the national revenue to address debt
servicing; which keeps getting bigger each year.
Some patriotic Nigerians have raised the issue in
the last few years on what is the actual debt
profile of the country. Put in simple terms, "How
much does Nigeria owe the Paris club and London
club respectively? How much is the worth of
Nigeria's debt to her creditors?
On the same score several Civil Society Groups
and Community Based Organisations are also
raising the issue in several fora calling for
outright debt cancellation, untied aid, and trade
justice for Nigeria and other African countries
as the only way forward for development in the
continent.
Global Call to Action Initiative
We believe that it is time to speak out on this
issue of debt burden, tied aid and double
standards and rigged rules at the international
trade system. It is time to speak against the
policies and rigged conditionalities of the World
Bank and International Monetary Funds (IMF), the
Paris club, London club and multilateral agencies
that the huge debt on Africa is akin to the
chains of slavery.
Global Call to Action against Poverty Initiative
wishes to mobilize Nigerians to press for
outright cancellation of Nigeria's debt, demand
for trade justice and untied aid.
For us therefore, to achieve the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) particularly in Nigeria
we call for:
… Trade Justice
Unjust trade characterizes globalization, daily
denying Africans the right to sustainable
livelihoods. The US and the European Union
continue to subsidize agriculture on a massive
scale, artificially depressing world prices -
while insisting that African markets open up some
more. Primary produce farmers in Africa are
adversely affected as cheap Northern goods are
dumped on African economies, squeezing them out
of the markets. There is no genuine effort to
remove trade barriers that threaten economic
growth in Africa, particularly African exports.
Deadlines and commitments in Doha on market
access/subsidies for agricultural produce and
access to generic medicines in the face of HIV
and AIDS have been broken, consistently and
without exception.
African regional institutions have failed the
poor in terms of negotiating on common goals. In
the face of unjust trade, African states have
argued for national concessions rather than
fighting for continental rights. A false sense of
'national sovereignty' defines the basis of
engagement and offer an open playing field for
regional positioning to be undermined as states
are picked off and negotiated with bilaterally.
For instance, engagement with the WTO is
characterized by mixed representations and
interests that do not enable African states to
unite and stand firm along a common agenda and
front
… Untied Aid
The post 9:11 era AID to the developing world is
increasingly tied to an agenda of security and
the 'War on Terror'. This has constricted the
space for negotiation by states and citizens with
priority being given to bilateral demands of
donors over the collective interests of the
continent. The attendant weakening of
international institutions - especially the
United Nations - has had a knock-on effect on the
capacity of supra-national structures to exercise
a strong role in mediating the role of the state
in delivering basic services to poor people.
The continued presence of harmful policy
conditionalities attached to aid acts to limit
and constrain the space, especially in the light
of debt stocks, for negotiating joint regional
agendas that will benefit the poor. From the
Millennium Challenge Account to the FTI,
conditionality favors compliance with market-led
economics and reduces the space for genuine
home-grown alternatives.
… Outright Debt Cancellation
The yoke of debt upon African states severely
constrains the space for negotiation and joint
action. In spite of the cancellation of
multilateral debt stocks by a number of donor
countries, notably the UK and Scandinavian
countries, the overall debt and debt servicing
requirements put a strain on the capacity of
African states to meet basic needs. The successes
of converted debt in HIPC countries have not led
to the expected expansion of the scheme. Debt
relief continues to be 'double counted' as part
of aid and the growing unsustainable impact of
debt on development is self-evident. Many African
countries, such as Zambia, Malawi and Cameroon,
are left paying more in debt servicing than they
invest in socio-economic development
domestically. To complicate this, growing
privatization and shifting of the debt stock into
the private sector is locking states into
non-negotiable spaces regarding the remainder of
their debt.
Many African countries are struggling to service
their debt while striving to reach the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs). According to UNCTAD,
Africa received some
$540 billion in loans between 1970 and
2002.Despite paying back close to $550 billion in
principal and interest; it still had a debt stock
of $ 295 billion at the end of 2002. There is
thus a robust economic case for a total
cancellation of Africa's debt. Low levels of
savings and investment in many African countries
lead to high poverty and adverse social
conditions which two factors are among the
biggest constraints on growth in low-income
countries. Continued debt servicing by African
nations constitutes a nominal reverse transfer of
resources to creditors by poor countries that by
all indications can least afford to do this. If
Africa is to the goal of reducing poverty by half
by 2015, as required by the MDGs, growth levels
will have to at least double to some 7 to 8 per
cent annually for the next decade, financial
requirements of which are incompatible with
present and projected levels of debt
servicing.
May 25, 2005
Abuja, Nigeria.