Page 12 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 9

MY AFRIKA
in anyway to attack those who
might have gone the way of debt,
either in the name of mortgage
or borrowing for buying cars
or household items or even for
business. For I have also read
severally of people who started
their huge businesses with loans.
However, no matter what the
reason is, the outcome of loans
and aid is always the same; a life
of heartaches and worries and
which for me is an aspect of
what it means for the borower to
be the servant of the lender.
Is Afrika really poor?
Not at all.
Afrika is not poor, just as the
lenders are not rich either. One
simpl has mastered the art of
mind wars, while the other thinks
all men are his friends.
He is not aware of the mind war
going on. One believes that he
needs the white man to build a
workable society for himself and
the other believes that the black
man is too weak in his mind to
do anything for himself.
At the end of the day, both of
them are living in a lie spin, but
at the expense of one of them.
Afrika's Debt weight
According to a report by Jubilee
Debt Campaign titled: "Africa’s
growing debt crisis: Who is
the debt owed to?" published in
October 2018, "African govern-
ment external debt payments
doubled within two years from
an average of 5.9% of govern-
ment revenue in 2015 to 11.8%
in 2017.
12 | Heal . restore . rebirth . Afrika
• 20% of African government
external debt is owed to China.
• 17% of African government
external interest payments are
made to China.
• In contrast, 32% of African
government external debt is
owed to private lenders, and 35%
to multilateral institutions such as
the World Bank.
• 55% of external interest pay-
ments are to private creditors.
Afrika's debt payments
Afrikan government external
debt payments have increased
dramatically in the last few years.
Between 2015 and 2017, they
doubled, rising from a (mean,
unweighted) average of 5.9% of
government revenue in 2015, to
11.8% of government revenue in
2017.
This means Afrikan government
debt payments are at the highest
level since 2001. Key causes of
this dramatic change are increas- I do have issues with Afrikans
es in lending since 2008 from
multiple lenders followed by falls
in commodity prices in mid-2014,
and rising US dollar interest rates
and the value of the US dollar in
recent years.
From this report which you can
find online, it appears that most
of the external debt that Afrika
has is owed to China. Look at
this statement below:
"The most comprehensive data
on loans to African governments
from China comes from the Chi-
na-Africa Research Initiative at
John Hopkins University (CARI).
CARI says there have been $143
billion of loans from Chinese
state institutions, and Chinese
private banks, to African govern-
ments between 2000 and
2017. Of the data CARI pro-
vides, at least 80% of these loans
are from organisations owned by
the Chinese state, but up to 20%
could be from private compa-
nies. These loans increased up
to 2013, then fell back, before a
spike in 2016."
So tell me, with all these loans
owed to organizations owned by
the Chinese state and the pri-
vate Chinese companies, are we
not actually selling out Afrika to
China? And are we not actually
slaves in such modern day times?
I have no issue with China as a
nation, nor do I have any issues
with their willingness to keep
spreading their money in Afrika
and in the other parts of the
world.
thinking that they have no choice
but to accept those loans, espe-
cially when they have what the
entire world is looking for. Afri-
ka's mineral wealth is enough to
make her the world super power
and not the world super-beggar
she has allowed herself to be-
come.
According to remarks made
by Dr. Howard Nicholas at a
Creative Collective/ISS Sym-
posium in the Netherlands in
2015 - which is now doing the
rounds on social media - aid and
debt were introduced into Afri-
ka purely as systems of control.