domingo, agosto 13, 2006

PanAfrica: Africa Still Cries Over Debt Burden

It is a year ago since the leaders of the most industrialised nations (Great 8) seemed to have pronounced themselves strongly, at Gleneagles, to addressing Africa's bad debt situation. Debt, politics of aid, trade, the environment and good governance featured highly on the July 2005 agenda. More specifically, the G8 leaders notably Tony Blair and George Bush told the rest of the world how 100% multilateral debt cancellation for 18 countries (14 of them in Africa, including Uganda) had been achieved. This was the bit of debt ideally owed to the World Bank IMF and ADB. Despite this 'gesture' and promises, Africa still cries over the debt burden, even after the G8 leaders came from their July 2006 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia.
The cry of Africa continues because, those African countries that were considered in the Gleneagles deal and subsequent action; Benin, Uganda, Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, Senegal, Zambia, Tanzania, and Niger, are merely a quarter of the 54 nations under the African Union (AU). Africa's debt servicing over the years, exploitation, impoverishment and loans spent on political haemorrhage (illegitimate debts rather than socio-economic development dictates that almost all the 54 countries deserve urgent debt cancellation.
The perceived consensus that ushered in the Millennium Development Goals under the auspices of the United Nations too call for real 100% debt cancellation, beginning with the G8, at both the multilateral and bilateral levels. Looking at Uganda, for example, its debt cancellation was about 80% of its total debt. Yet the balance of 20% written in the bilateral accounts itself remains a big burden to Uganda's implementation of poverty reduction strategies. Also, the July 2005 debt cancellation deal merely looked at the debt repayments a country ought to have honoured than what it was actually paying. That is, the perceived 100% cancellation was only in books and not on actual repayments.
Africa still bleeds and cries out because those countries that qualified for the 2005 debt cancellation were graduates of the earlier arrangement under the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative coined in the late 1990s. The conditionalities slapped on the beneficiaries of HIPC (privatisation, no state sponsorship for tertiary education, cost-sharing in hospitals) were largely unpopular, undemocratic, harmful and not people-centred.
The writer is the Programme Officer, Ugandan Debt Network.

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