TRADE, DEBT AND DEVELOPMENT IN SUB-SAHARAN
AFRICA: A Muslim Initiative to the Rescue? - 3

[Introduction]    [Trade & regional Groups]   [Debt & Dev ]    [Muslim Initiative ]    Debt The crippling nature of debt is too familiar to warrant detailed discussion here. The position of Tanzania seem to summarise it all. In the recent UNCTAD IX, the Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa "said that his country spends $5 per capita servicing debt each year, compared to $2 per capita it spends on health." [30] From 1980 to 1990 the total debt of sub-Saharan African more than doubled. The total for 1995 is over $223bn while the debt/export and debt/GNP ratios for the same year are 269.8 % and 74.1% respectively. [31] The issue is no longer whether these countries can pay or not but whether they can survive or not. The recent talks about debt relief for heavily-indebted poor country (HIPC, in the new jargon) has already run aground. While IMF and World Bank are taking pride in shifting the debate from "if" to "how" creditors could help HIPCs, the creditors themselves are not willing to yield an inch. [32] In the 22-23 April meeting in Washington, this year, "the most significant detail that emerged was that the Bank and Fund have no intention of writing off any debt, hence the need for the trust fund. The most they plan to do , said Fund officials, is to extend maturities on affected loans. This explanation did little to win over either creditors or debtors." [33] If there is ever to be any relief it would clearly be too little too late. One cannot help but agree with John Pilger that Debt is nothing but ‘War by Other Means’. It was a war, Pilger argued, "which you do not see on the TV screens because it is waged by more sophisticated means and its principal weapon is debt. The casualties of this war include half-million children that die every year, more than twice the number that died in the recently concluded Gulf War. It is a war", Pilger insisted, which make a mockery of the Western humanitarian gestures such as Western aid, and the spectacular life aid show in 1985." For, as Pilger found out, "the very poor for whom the life aid was staged paid the Western countries that same year twice as much in terms of debt servicing." Pilger had no difficulty conceding "the fact that it is the poor that finance the rich and not vice versa". [34] The anti-slavery society, a human right group thus "declared a debt a contemporary form of slavery. This is clearly demonstrated in the Philippine where 44% of the national budget goes to foreign banks to service loans while only 3% of the budget goes to health services." [35] One cannot also help but recall the words of Leo Tolstoy, the author of ‘War and Peace’, when he said, "I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back." [36] Who take the responsibility for the suffering and death of millions of the poor in countries like Tanzania whose health budget is robbed to service debt? Even Golda Meir of Israel conceded that, "there is no difference between one’s killing and making decisions that will send others to kill’. [37] But in Africa’s relation with the West, this is not new, it is a continuation of history. Africa ought to have known better. Development Not surprisingly, sub-Saharan Africa rather than developing has been registering negative development and de-industrialisation. In the last five years frantic efforts have been made to salvage Africa, the most dramatic being the Global Coalition for Africa, a coalition speared headed by the Dutch in the sprit of the Marshal plan for Europe after the World War II. The GCA was first sponsored in a conference in Maastricht in July 1990 by the Dutch government and formerly established the following year. The GCA wishes to address the no doubt important question, "Can Africa’s decline be reversed?" "The simple answer", the GCA argued, "is yes ..... but Africa will need sustained and increased external support if it is to meet the challenge without unreasonable hardship". [38] The documents of the first advisory committee meeting of the GCA which held in Paris, September 1991 are quite impressive and have identified eight issues to be addressed. [39] The GCA seeks to work with and expedite action on existing international programmes aimed at the recovery of African economy. It is perhaps too early to say what its impact has been, but until it begins to translate into tangible results it is safer to believe that it is all political language, which, in the words of Orwell, "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind". [40] Within Africa itself there has been a lot of reflection and rethinking among scholars and series of meetings and the signing of numerous charters and declarations [41] among the political leadership. We shall not allow these political sloganeering to detain us even for a moment, for we know these rituals well enough to know what to expect. As for the scholars they are many and varied. By some chance (or is it design?) last year’s issue of African Development Review [42] has brought together articles of some of the best minds in the field, Samir Amin, Ali Mazrui, Sadig Rashid, Abdalla Bujra, to mention some. Sadig Rashid’s ‘Rethinking Development Strategy in Africa’ has made an extensive survey and analysis and examined what he calls opportunities for the unfolding scenarios. Ali Mazrui looked at social engineering and political bridge building for the 21st century, while Jugessur and Hamel jointly looked at the possibility of technology leap-frogging in Africa. Abdalla Bujra, the guest editor tried to bring all the good ideas in the volume into some focus. His conclusions echo a sense of urgency as well as desperation: "The situation facing Africa is very serious. Africa has no time to think and discuss all aspects of the problematique of the future useful though such an exercise might be. Africa must act now before the situation worsens and the future becomes even bleaker." [43] He went further, paraphrasing Ndegwa and Green and laying further stress: "African countries often appear to be waiting for WB and IMF support and strategic guidance on what to do. ... However past experience of help and aid from the international community have neither brought about sustainable growth nor diminished the crises. The faith in outside help is therefore misplaced. Africans must have confidence and faith in themselves and act now! There is no shortage of long term plans, strategies and programmes. African capacity to prepare for the future is available and adequate. What is required is visionary leadership and resolve!" [44] But does Africa have the visionary leaders? If it does, would the life presidents give them a chance? We can not escape the fact that governance is at the centre of Africa’s recovery. Indeed the mess is largely the making of mercenary regimes with the active connivance of the same international community that look more worried about them. The primary concern of these leaders has never been the interest of their people, but the elusive game of self-perpetuation which is pursued vigorously and recklessly until the expiry of either the leader or the state that he heads. [45] "This inordinate ambition to stay in power at all costs", observes Kumo, "ensures, quite inescapably, a massive wave of institutional corruption and the plunder of public resources leaving the rest of society to wallow in neglect and despair." [46] This despondency has generated so much apathy and pessimism that the whole idea of a nation state is becoming cynical. As Stephen Ellis rightly observed, "given the record of some African states in robbing their own citizens, it is at least debatable who needs them the most: the citizens of the country or the international powers which created them in the first place and have done so much to prolong their life, since independence, with financial and other aids." [47]