Colonialists propose relief for African poverty

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.