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Senegal World alliance against debt |
DEBT
«Dakar —Initiative 2000: From opposition to providing alternatives»
IAn international conference having as theme: «Dakar —Initiative 2000: From opposition to providing alternatives» is scheduled to be held in Dakar, Senegal, 11-17 December 2000. This meeting is a follow-up to previous efforts made throughout Africa and the rest of the world, to draw attention to the fact that now it is extremely urgent that totality of Africa’s debt is cancelled and Structural Adjustment Programmes rejected.
A number of positive moves have already been made in this direction, but the main issue remains: Structural Adjustment plus other similar «programmes», continue to constitute major obstacles to Africa’s economic and social development. That’s why the Dakar conference organizers have decided to take dynamic positive action extended over a period of time. Such action to be followed up by each African country at a local level.
Aims
Participants will include representatives from more than two hundred international networks, organizations, associations and Non-Governmental Organizations, coming from every continent; plus a number of distinguished personalities.The conference will have as its main aims:
Conference resolutions and decisions must be followed by a worldwide effort to influence public opinion on the issues in question. Such, in any case, is what conference planners, such as Senegal’s African Council of Non-Governmental Organisations for Development (CONGAD), and two Belgian organizations — The Committee For The Cancellation of the Debt of Third World Countries (CADTM) and The National Centre For Development and Co-operation (CNCD) — are hoping for.
Infallible arguments
These organisations want to take some kind of positive action because countries in debt are having to pay out far more than what they owe. Also, the Structural Adjustment Programmes are mainly responsible for Africa’s present catastrophic situation.
CONGAD‘s representative on the conference’s coordinating committee, Mr. Demba Moussa Dembélé, puts it this way: «For a number of years, the flow of financial help towards countries in debt has, for several years, become a negative element in the debt situation. Poor countries which are struggling to pay-off their top-heavy debts, are in fact transferring part of their thin resources to finance the development of rich countries (in debt re-payments). Let’s face it, most of the poor countries will never be able to pay all their debts, let’s face it. And the creditor nations know it!»
Mr Dembélé continues: «In some African countries, their debts were
often contracted by dictatorships in the pay of the West. The dictators used the money thus obtained for their personal ends». And referring specifically to sub-Saharan Africa, Mr Dembélé says: «The amount owed by debtor countries in this part of Africa, to their “Western creditors.” represents a drop in the ocean when compared to what these capitalist nations have taken out of Africa during last five centuries, through slavery, colonization and the present economic “recolonisation”».
Recession, unemployment and poverty
Regarding the Structural Adjustment Programmes, Mr. Dembélé explains: «Creditor nations have insisted on debtor nations implementing a Structural Adjustment Programme before any grant-in-aid is given. This means the debtor nations’ annual budgets must reflect a dramatic cut-back in public expenditure, resulting in recession, unemployment and poverty. Other policies insisted on by creditor nations — liberalization of the economy and privatization of state-run or parastatal enterprises — have contributed to choke the life out of national companies, and ensured the control of African economies by Western multinationals, euphemistically described as “strategic partners”».
Politicians, economists, both sides of industry (public and private) and indeed, the whole of Africa’s civil society must lend their weight to obtain the cancellation of Africa’s foreign debt, and the ending of Structural Adjustment Programmes. This should constitute a first step by way of a positive answer to a recent World Bank document, entitled: «Can Africa lay claim to the 21st century?»
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