Page 65 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 11

ECONOMY

ing, with financial backers, as if
someone`s backing could create
development! We have been
advised to go to these recom-
mended lenders. We have been
proposed with nice financial
set-ups. We have been indebted
for 50, 60 years and more. That
means we have been led to com-
promise our people for 50 years
and more.

Under its current form the
debt is a formula for controlled
imperialism; debt is a cleverly
managed re-conquest of Africa
aiming at subjugating its growth
and development through for-
eign rules. Thus each one of us
becomes the financial slave, that
is to say – a true slave to those
who were treacherous enough negotiated with 81 countries taken precedence over health,
to put money in our countries since March 2020 – when the over food to the hungry, over
with obligations for us to repay. pandemic was declared – push education , over everything
We are told to repay, but it is not for belt-tightening that could that matters. If debt is to be
a moral issue. It is not about this result in deep cuts to public seen from the standpoint of its
so-called honour of repaying or healthcare systems and pension origins, then we need to look at
not!” schemes, wage freezes and cuts debt which has its origins in the
for public sector workers such Belt and Road Initiative. That
Debt servicing and restrictive as doctors, nurses and teachers, is debt owed to China since the
loans for poor countries, in and unemployment benefits, beginning of the Belt and Road
these current times , is more like sick pay.” Initiative in 2013 to construct
than immoral! infrastructure and build eco-
Africa`s debt, to the IMF, is a nomic corridors.
As written in an article on Afri- creation of a neo-liberal eco-
ca and the World: nomic system of so-called Free The G20 announced its Debt
Trade that has deliberately Service Suspension Initiative
“Oxfam reported “84 percent withheld industrialization from in April this year. This is a
of the International Monetary African economies. The debt non-binding agreement but
Fund’s (IMF) COVID-19 loans should have been renounced pressure is being put on China
encourage, and in some cases in 1987 . But it wasn`t. Instead to join the Paris Club of credi-
require, poor countries hard hit Thomas Sankara was assassinat- tors.
by the economic fallout from ed for what he said. This initiative is an attack on
the pandemic to adopt more China. The intention is to de-
tough austerity measures in the Today the situation has changed. rail the Belt and Road Initiative.
aftermath of the health crisis”. Africa`s debt burden to the IMF China, which only accounts for
New analysis by Oxfam finds remains immoral. Debt ser- 17% of Africa`s debt, is not lia-
that 76 out of the 91 IMF loans vicing across the continent has ble to pay for the decades of the

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