Africa’s debt crisis calls for reparations

The plight of Africa has recently received a great deal of worldwide attention, and rightfully so.

During the first weekend in July, Live 8 concerts took place in various countries to help elevate mass consciousness on the grinding poverty and the HIV/AIDS crisis that afflict tens of millions of African people.

Artists such as Stevie Wonder, Will Smith, Madonna, Paul McCartney, U-2’s Bono and many others lent their talents to this worthy cause. The concerts were timed to occur right before the G-8 summit was to take place in a remote town in Scotland July 6-8.

G-8 refers to the richest capitalist countries—the United States, England, France, Italy, Canada, Germany and Japan—whose top leaders meet annually to discuss current economic and trade developments, and Russia, which also sits in at the meeting.

One of main topics of discussion was the debt crisis that has engulfed Africa for many decades. Official representatives of many African countries were invited to sit in on the proceedings.

Based on news reports, it’s apparent that these African leaders had very little influence regarding the outcome of this summit. It was U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair who dominated the airwaves during the summit, and even more so after the July 7 bombings on the London subways.

There was a general agreement coming out of the summit that the debt of 18 out of the 54 African countries, considered the poorest on the continent, would be canceled. An increase of $50 billion in aid over the next 10 years to Africa was also approved.

The roots of underdevelopment

Did this G-8 summit do justice by the African people? Will an additional $5 billion for the next the 10 years help to lift millions out of impoverishment and destitution? Will the cancellation of debt of one-third of the African countries help their devastated economies rebound? The answers to all these questions is: absolutely not!

The fact that Africa is both the richest continent in terms of resources and the poorest in terms of underdevelopment did not come about over a span of years or decades but centuries. Three of the G-8 members—Germany, France and England —expanded their capitalist economies with the African slave trade beginning in the middle of the 16th century. The United States became involved in the slave trade a century later. An estimated 40 million African people were stolen from their homeland during slavery.

Europe became the main colonizer of the entire African continent. The result was millions more lives lost and resources and land plundered from the late 19th century until African struggles brought about nominal independence in the 1960s and 1970s.

Today the greatest part of Africa is a neocolony under control of imperialist banks through the International Mone tary Fund and the World Bank. Since the post-colonial period, whole African economies have been caught in a vicious cycle of bank loans and structural agreements that have plunged them into a spiraling debt they can never pay off in several lifetimes.

According to World Bank statistics, Africa spends an estimated $15 billion annually on debt repayments but receives less than $13 billion in aid during the same time frame. For every dollar that an African country receives in grants, it pays $13 in interest on debt.

Africa’s entire debt stands at $300 billion. (Nepad Secretariat) To illustrate the tremendous gap between the haves and have-nots on a global scale, the richest 18 North Americans could pay off Africa’s total debt with billions of dollars to spare. (Forbes Magazine, 2002)

This debt crisis has meant nothing but underdevelopment, poverty and misery, largely concentrated in the sub-Saharan region. African countries spend more on the debt than on providing health care, housing, food and education.

Thirty million Africans have been diagnosed with HIV, the great majority of them women. The African infant mortality rate is 92 per 1,000 live births.

Salih Booker, executive director of Africa Action, stated: “This G-8 plan is inadequate and a contemptuous response to African demands for justice. It is an unapologetic confirmation of the global apartheid system in which the most impoverished continent bankrolls the development of the rich world.

“Their announcement to increase aid to Africa is the greatest hoax of our time,” Booker added. “While they trumpet minu scule increases in development assistance, they continue to extract billions of dollars a year in debt repayments from countries excluded from this diminutive debt deal.” (blackamericaweb.com)

Reparations, not the free market

The G-8 leaders, especially Bush and Blair, have cried crocodile tears before the worldwide media regarding the situation in Africa. Their “solutions” for the African crisis—better governance and increased trade—show where their real interests lie: in increasing corporate profits.

African exports, from oil to textiles, are generally unable to compete with the imperialist countries, which can flood the worldwide capitalist market with cheaper goods and rich subsidies.

Africa is in the dire situation that it is today because capitalism, a system that has to either expand or die, has denied it the right to develop.

Even if the debt were cancelled in all of the African countries, which should be done immediately, this would not automatically solve Africa’s crisis of underdevelopment. Short-term solutions are needed to deal with the current suffering, like free on demand HIV/AIDS drugs, food, health care workers and much more.

The African continent has been bled dry because of the devastating slave trade, colonialism, neocolonialism and imperialism. Africa does not owe the banks one red cent. It should be the other way around—that is, the class of greedy bankers and bosses owe the African peoples billions if not trillions of dollars in reparations, especially providing state-of-the-art technology with no political or economic strings attached.