by ANB-BIA, Brussels, March 1998
The modern roots of globalisation lie in the establishment of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund after the Second World War. Both of them provided loans to developing countries which had lost their affiliation to certain "areas of interest," (mainly the Soviet Union and the United States), once the Cold War had come to an end, and which were now looking around for other "sponsors". The result was that most Third World countries ended up with colossal debts they would never be able to pay back. These loans were granted under certain conditions as how the money could be used and how the economies of the debtor countries should be "adjusted". These were called Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP)s and Africa has experienced a fair share of these.
The SAPs usually included a forced programme of privatisation, the selling-off of government-owned enterprises, and the cutting-back of "unprofitable" programmes (frequently in the areas of health care, housing and education) - unprofitable, we hasten to add, in the eyes of the international organisations. The idea being that all these things should be brought into the free market system of private enterprise.
But what's happened? The overall result of the loans and SAPs, is, that rich countries have been receiving preferential treatment when it comes to importing basic products at privileged prices from their "partners" in Africa. And poor countries have been growing poorer and poorer, groaning under the impossibility of ever being able to emerge from their debt- ridden status, with their populations unable to pay the increased prices established under the SAPs.
Transfer all this onto a world (global) scene with free trade and a free flow of money, and what happens? The rich can export and import what they want at the prices they want. The poor just have to stand by and watch.
One would think that a global approach to market economy, would mean that more and more foreign companies would be prepared to invest in basic providers. Sadly, much of the cash invested has not been spent on developing new businesses and jobs. Rather it has been used for acquisitions and mergers of already existing companies and plants.
But the most serious problem is the extent to which such foreign direct investment (FDI) by-passes the poorest nations. Some 73% of the flows of FDI went to only 12 countries. As much as 90% moved between the rich industrialised countries, or to and from the fast-growing Asian economies and China. The losers in all this global movement are found mostly in Africa, which got no more than $4.5 billion FDI in 1996, and has received only 5% of the world's FDI in the 1990s.
And even within Africa, most FDI went to extractive industries. The world's 48 least developed countries see scarcely any cash.
On the other hand, globalisation cannot be ignored. "Africa is part of the world, and ours is increasingly the global village where something happening in one part of the world has immediate repercussions in most other parts". So said Archbishop Desmond Tutu, outgoing President of the All Africa Conference of Churches. (Speech to AACC, Nairobi, October 1997). He continued: "A car accident in France brought the world to a standstill. We give thanks for the life of Princess Diana who sought to help rid the world of the scourge of land mines, and visited Angola in that campaign. And also for Mother Theresa who incarnated compassion and caring for the poor and the derelicts".
But the Archbishop issued a warning at the same time: "For so long we have lived in a bipolar world, the East vs the West in the era of the Cold War. Now we inhabit a uni-polar world with the USA the only bull in the kraal. And that has put pressure on many countries to democratise if they wanted to get a hearing about aid, etc. Africa has also had to come to terms with so-called globalisation, the expansion of the hegemony of the multinational corporations, the insistent call for a free market economy where the shots keep being called by the affluent and powerful, to the detriment of producer countries, so vulnerable to the dictates of the mighty...The odds are heavily stacked against Africa and other parts of the developing world".
Archbishop Tutu lamented that Africa was almost totally ignored in recent IMF and World Bank meetings which concentrated on Asian problems. He reminded his listeners that Africa and other developing lands stagger under the increasing burden of international debt. The world missed an opportunity when the UN celebrated its Golden Jubilee, to invoke the Biblical Jubilee principle to cancel the debts of poor nations, and to give them the opportunity to make a fresh start.
As long as most of Africa continues to exist in a debt-stricken situation, and as long as most of Africa's peoples continue to live in dire poverty, democracy has little chance to take root and flourish. One might well ask if democracy had taken firm root in Central Africa, would Rwanda, Burundi, Zaire (Congo RDC), Congo-Brazzaville have experienced the horrors of civil war?
The same surely applies to Sudan, still in the throes of civil war, and Somalia's never-ending factional fighting. And would Sierra Leone's coup d'etat have taken place? And what about the continuing carnage in Algeria?
It is interesting to note that in the West, the word "Democracy" has now been replaced by "Good Governance", with the accent on good administrative structures, an independent judiciary and some kind of popular participation in the politics of the nation.
END of PART 5/6
1. The winds of change ||
2.Democracy in Africa - Reality or Myth?|| 3. Africa and the World Community
4. Manifestations of Democracy: An independent Press and a
free Judiciary
6. Towards the news Millennium Whither Africa?
CONTENTS | ANB-BIA HOMEPAGE | WEEKLY NEWS
PeaceLink 1998 - Reproduction authorised, with usual acknowledgement