Andrew England
The Financial Express
July 8, 2004

Jeffrey Sachs, a special adviser to Kofi Annan, UN secretary-general, told African leaders and diplomats they should call on rich nations to cancel “100 per cent of the debt” owed by highly indebted countries, most of which are in Africa.

If they did not, “I would suggest obstruction – you do it yourselves,” Sachs told a recently-held conference dealing with Africa’s perennial food crises.

“The time has come to end this charade, the debts are unaffordable,” he added. “No civilised country should try to collect the debts of people that are dying of hunger and disease and poverty.”

Statistics published recently by the UN Conference on Trade and Development show the 34 poorest African nations – the majority of the world’s least developed countries – had a combined foreign debt of $106bn in 2002.

More than 40 per cent of sub-Saharan Africa’s population survives on less than a $1.0 a day and 200m Africans are underfed, according to the African Union (AU).

A number of African presidents, as well as advocacy groups, have long called for the debt to be cancelled, arguing that Africa has little chance of combating poverty while servicing vast loans.

“Our analysis has shown that there is absolutely no way you can make debt payments on debt and achieve the development goals,” Sachs said.

The UN’s Millennium Development Goals call for halving extreme poverty and hunger in developing countries by 2015.

Meanwhile, the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called for a “green revolution” for Africa to improve agricultural production and rural development. But he acknowledged that halving hunger by 2015 seemed, “more a far-off fantasy than an achievable target” for dozens of countries.