Page 117 - A People Called Afrika

Restoring The Honor Code

ka’s pre-colonial economic trajectory during colonialism af-
fected the continent’s natural growth path and ‘forced’ it in
a direction that made it vulnerable to market forces, aid de-
pendency and the embrace of debt. This reality was worsened
by the lack of goodwill on the part of most of the emerging
Afrikan states to carve out a path for Afrika that would have
safeguarded its complete independence from the global sys-
tem, which would have ensured that any interactions with the
world were made only on Afrika’s terms. The insistence on
going it alone by the nation states left them vulnerable to the
whims of the globalists and any policies and agendas that were
forced on them as a result of reaching out their hands for fi-
nancing from the IMF and World Bank. Instead of rejecting
the demands of the outsiders, and in order to get their money,
Afrika danced to their tune, and received the payments for
her harlotry. As Alemayehu states, “The use of IMF credit
became important in the late 1970s and early 1980s when
structural adjustment and enhanced structural adjustment
facilities became important components of flows to Africa.”

Thus Afrika embraced the begging bowl diplomacy that has
kept her in perpetual compromise for decades. As a result, Af-
rika is caught up in bi-lateral debt (country to country) multilat-
eral debt (country to international financial institutions such as
IMF, World Bank, African Development Bank) privately held
international debt (e.g. Eurobonds) and domestic commercial
debt (country to local commercial banks) that, barring a mira-
cle, will take generations to escape from. What’s worse, is that
Afrika keeps digging holes to fill holes, extending its debt from
bad to worse, to worst and to whatever is worse than worst. Af-
rika fell for the lie that it was told, that it can use debt to grow,
but sincerely, in the last 60 years, have no light bulbs gone off

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