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Debt
burden ‘mortgages Africa’s future’
18.10.2003
The $300billion that African countries
owe foreign creditors is the single biggest obstacle to the continent’s
development.
That’s the warning from a UNI-Africa paper prepared for the Regional
Conference in Johannesburg.
Initiatives to clear this debt mountain have been "inadequate in
delivering substantial debt relief" warns the background paper.
"As Africa’s debt service obligations grow each year, and as Africa’s
people are forced to repay these debts by mortgaging their health, their
education and their future, it is time to acknowledge that debt
cancellation represents the only just solution."
Trade unions across Africa are being urged to get involved in the
discussions on poverty reduction programmes that governments hope will
lead to debt relief.
Greater dialogue with governments and alliance with other organisations in
society will help get across a union message of people-based development.
"(It) offers a new opening
for trade unions to engage their governments and demand a role in
policy making."
In her country, said Comba Gueye Ndiaye, of SYTS Senegal,
"since 1999 plans have come and gone and the result has been an
increase in poverty and jobs have been lost".
To applause she said she shivered at a process that aimed at poverty
reduction rather than poverty elimination.
She said the burden of making sure the family survives falls on
women.
"The only fair answer is the total forgiveness of debt." |
Comba Gueye Ndiaye,
Senegal
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Africa could pay off all its outstanding debts if it could recover the
billions looted from the continent by corrupt leaders, said Emmanuel
Bakot-Ndjock, of FENASYBOF Cameroon.
"There is a complicity between international banks to keep money that
was obtained fraudulently."
Christopher Hart is a Treasury banker
at South Africa’s Absa bank - a union member who works in the heart of
the free market in money. As a keynote speaker he told delegates that at
least the debt interest should be forgiven.
He compared the ease with which the banks could create the money for loans
with the sacrifices of governments to repay them.
He was not so popular with delegates with his call for privatisation and
greater power for free markets.
"The problem of poverty is income - people need jobs and you need
wealth creation for that to take place." That requires an expansion
in the capital base of the economy "and if there are no opportunities
then capital will not arrive".
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Christopher Hart
South Africa
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"In the modern economy we need competitively priced
telecommunications, a level and flexibility of skills."
Competition, he said, is a key basis for competitiveness - and that could
be on an international level.
"There is nothing to say that Africa cannot achieve the things that
have been achieved elsewhere in the world."
He also told delegates that the role of trade unions has become more
important with the creation of NEPAD.
"If Africa is to reassert itself and become a leading contender in
global affairs we need more democratic institutions in African
society."
Privatisation is not the answer, said Joyce Nonde, of ZUFIAW Zambia, who
was recently involved in a successful campaign against the privatisation
of a bank and key public services.
That campaign was based on experience of previous privatisations.
"Privatisation has not helped us in my country - it has brought
destruction."
Zambia has been excluded from the latest initiative for highly indebted
countries and even Uganda - which has benefited from the scheme - pays as
much debt as before, she told delegates.
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