Colonialists propose relief for African poverty
By
G. Dunkel
Published Mar 23, 2005 1:30 PM
More than half the people in Africa live in extreme
poverty. The World Bank, an institution responsible for putting many people into
these dire straits, defines extreme poverty as a household living on less than
$1 a day.
Extreme poverty means that a household cannot meet its basic
needs. Its members go hungry, lack access to health care, education, safe
drinking water and basic sanitary needs like soap. Often an extremely poor
household doesn’t even have a roof to keep the rain off or basic articles
of clothing like shoes.
The proportion of extremely poor people in Africa
has actually grown in the past 20 years, while the rest of the world has become
more prosperous.
Tony Blair, the British prime minister who is this
year’s convener of the G7 summit meeting of the seven biggest imperialist
powers, has announced a plan to “solve” Africa’s debt crisis.
Jeffrey Sachs, a U.S. economist with deep ties to the ruling class and a
strong connection to the United Nations, just put forth a separate plan in a
book called “The End of Poverty.” It was summarized in the March 14
edition of Time magazine. Sachs was a consultant in Poland for the
counter-revolutionary group Soli darity and worked with Boris Yeltsin in Russia
for two years.
Blair’s plan is being compared to the “Marshall
Plan” created by the United States, which rebuilt Western Europe after
World War II, while guaranteeing continued capitalist domination and big profits
for U.S. companies.
According to Kenya’s The Standard: “The
Blair plan is savvy in its appeal and grand in its vision. It recommends, among
other things, the improvement of governance and ending of wars in Africa,
provision of more and better aid, debt relief and repeal of global trade
rules.”
The Standard mentions the skepticism surrounding
Blair’s plan, growing out of Britain’s need to refurbish its image
after backing the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. But it sees the issue
that will make or break Blair’s plan in whether or not “its
ownership by the people of Africa” is assured. Of course, it would help if
U.S. opposition to a key financial technique was dropped.
Sachs’
scheme, in details close to Blair’s but from a U.S. vantage point, is
really aimed at convincing the U.S. ruling class that spending $500
billion—half a trillion dollars—on the “war on
terrorism” won’t succeed unless a small fraction of it is diverted
to alleviating poverty.
Sachs does not feign as much concern about
“corruption” as Blair. He even points out that Bangladesh, Indonesia
and Pakistan experienced major economic growth in the 1990s although corruption
was rampant.
Sachs mentions the experience of Kenya. The country spends
two to three times the amount it receives in foreign aid for its rural
population to service its international debt. Kenya’s budget is being
drained, Sachs says, by the “international community”is, by the
imperialist banks.
Overall, Africa pays $13.5 billion a year in debt
service, a tremendous capital outflow from the poorest continent to the
developed world.
The main problem with these and other plans to alleviate
Africa’s poverty and enable economic development is that they fail to
acknowledge that the countries of Western Europe and North America owe Africa
billions of dollars in reparations for three centuries of the slave trade and
two centuries of colonialism.
Until the imperialist powers are forced to
admit that their growth and prosperity rests on a foundation of slavery and
brutal exploitation of Africa, any plan for alleviating poverty is nothing more
than putting a Band-Aid on a festering sore.
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