Gerald Mwale, OneWorld Africa
May 9, 2005

As Mother’s Day, May 8, was being celebrated around the world, the majority of mothers in Africa, who make up over half of the continent’s 680 million people, received neither flowers nor cards from their doting children. In fact, the vast number does not know of the day’s existence, nor even its significance.

Mother’s Day is in many countries a day for celebrating motherhood and thanking mothers. Mothers often receive gifts on this day, and it is a huge time of year for mail in many countries. In 1973, the U.S. Postal Service was held up for 8 days because of the constant flow of letters and cards.

And so, while post offices in the United States and elsewhere were jammed with letters and postcards for mothers, African mothers were waging their losing battle against poverty. At the same time, the continent’s finance ministers were winding up three days of talk in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, calling for the cancellation of Africa’s
debt burden.

Economic crises

Explanations for the economic crises that have wracked the nations of Africa in the post-colonial period are many and complex. Some contributing factors are internal, some are external in origin. One area of concern that has received increased attention in recent years is Africa’s enormous external debt and programs sponsored by the World
Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to deal with the burden of that debt.

In a paper entitled “Testimony on the Impact of Debt Burden on Women,” Specioza N. Kiwanuka writes that leading problems for women in the South have been listed as illiteracy, poverty, lack of voice and public security (war, insurgence, cattle raiding, banditry).

Kiwanuka is of the opinion that non-investment in girls’ education and inequitable burdening of women and girls with domestic labour have intensified their problems of inequity in taking up positions of responsibility in society, in control of income within households, greater female illiteracy, lack of property and land ownership and
control for women (e.g. only 7 percent of women in Uganda own land); and adolescent girls have far greater levels of infection with HIV than age mate boys.

Effects of illiteracy are also multifaceted in the form of poor parental care and child malnutrition. Insecurity has caused families to be displaced, loss of property and access to land, and deprived them of both income and subsistence agriculture to support the household. Poverty contributes to household crowding; many people live in single
room dwellings, especially in urban areas. In rural areas, the average size of land holding is decreasing as a result of population growth and land fragmentation due to inheritance. Cash for health expenditure comes primarily from the sale of subsistence crops, followed by borrowing. Most households are not able to maintain any cash reserve or
savings. The average household cash income in Uganda is still very low – less
than US$200 per capita per annum. Though poverty levels are claimed to have dropped from 44 percent to 35% in the period 1998-2000, the gap between the poor and the rich is continuing to rise and poverty levels are still alarming. Rural poverty levels are as high as 80% and urban poverty, 59%.

IMF claims that its programs for low-income countries have progressively strengthened the integration of social spending into programme design. IMF claims that during the Structural Adjustment Program period of 1994-98 there was an 80% increase in public spending on education and health care. The actual situation is that African
countries’ expenditure rose only by 20% per year after falling continuously for 15 years. At this rate it will take until the year 2010 to restore spending on education and health to the level of 1985! Between 1990 and 1993, African region paid US$ 13.4 billion annually to its external creditors more than its combined spending on education and
health. Yet the African debt burden continued to rise so that in 1994 alone it increased by 3.25 to US$ 312 billion. On education, total spending in Sub-Saharan Africa fell in real terms between 1980-1988, from US$ 11 billion to US$7 billion. A review of 26 countries shows that there was a decline in spending per pupil from US$133 to US$89. Even more serious is the drop in enrolment rates from 71.1% in 1988 to 66.7% in 1990. On average, only 37% of girls enrolled in primary level school in 1990 and this figure drops after seven to eight years of schooling.

Zambia spends four dollars on debt service for every one dollar on health while infant mortality rate rises. Uganda spends US$3 per person annually on health and the same amount on education but US$17 per person annually on debt repayment, while in every 10, five Ugandan children die of preventable diseases before reaching the age of five
years. The resultant fall in hospital attendance because of user fees has led
to increased unpaid labour provided by women especially for HIV/AIDS patients. Similarly the rising cost of childbirth has increased the maternal mortality rate. This was evident as even as far back as 1993 for example when a UNICEF report cites figures as high as 1,000 deaths to 100,000 births in Ghana. The situation is made worse by the
extremely high patient to doctor ratios. In Uganda, for example, the ratio is 24,000 patients to 1 doctor.

Cameroon’s debt in the year 2000 was at US$ 9597 million (6000 billion FCFA) and the country spends US$ 659 million in annual debt servicing but US$ 249 million on education and US$ 98 million on health. In Zambia, 72, 000 people lost their jobs in SAP induced retrenchment and by 1996, there was a report of three million part-time child
labourers out of a total population of nine million! Female participation in the informal sector increased from 405 in 1980 to 575 in 1986 and has since grown. During the same period, there was a nine-fold increase in the 12-to-14 year age group working in the
informal sector.

In Zimbabwe, in spite of the austere SAP measures, the foreign debt stood at Zimbabwe dollars 36. 5 billion by 1996, of which Z$2 billion was scheduled for debt repayment. In the same year, real wages declined by 405 and inflation was rising at 23 percent.

Mozambique indebtedness has been compounded by annual disasters, the floods of 1999 destroyed 141 schools, spread malaria, caused dysentery and cholera and destroyed roads. By 1999, Mozambique was cited by the World Bank as the fastest growing economy, but is also said to have huge financial obstacles and inadequate resources that block its path
towards long-term healthy development. During the 1990s, Mozambique’s debt reached 594 percent of its GNP. Yearly payments of US$57 million surpassed the dollar expenditure on primary health of US$20 million and education of US$32 million combined. Then, there is the odious debt or money borrowed to finance apartheid
related activities in South Africa and states as far as Tanzania. All those examples call for total debt cancellation. In conclusion, what is called for is total debt cancellation – both
bilateral and multilateral. On the grounds that undemocratic governments contracted the debt and they are therefore illegitimate since repayments violated the rights to health, education and economic development of the most vulnerable groups, especially women and children.

Past mistakes must be avoided and governments must develop clear guidelines as to how loans will benefit men, women, and children. As a new measure, citizens need to become the mechanism to control new resources and governments should only obtain loans that are sanctioned by the people through their representatives (parliamentarians) and
allow civil society to monitor them. Debt negotiations ought to consider the link between debt and budgeting for social services. And reviews of poverty reduction strategies need
to be gender disaggregated. Last but not least, complicity of borrowers and debtors plus the historical cause of debt must be included in debt analysis.

Colonialism legacy

And so, as Africa’s finance ministers wound up the three days of talk in Dakar, the conference described the continent’s debt problems as a lingering legacy of colonialism. According to the BBC, the finance ministers agreed to urge their leaders to adopt a “militant and forceful position” on debt cancellation when they meet later this year.

Earlier this year the Africa Commission made a similar appeal for debt relief. Ministers observed that many heavily indebted African nations could work harder to cut  inefficiencies out of their economies.

Export issues

“The current level of African debt is not sustainable, and we have to look at ways of making sure that the debt does become sustainable,”Maxwell Mkwezalamba, the African Union’s commissioner for economic affairs, told the BBC.

“We have to look at our economies and see whether we can export more, and our domestic debt management policies, because this is where we tend to have problems.”

Zambia’s Finance Minister Ngandu Magande says his country is spending more on servicing foreign debt than on local issues such as education and health.

He praised the Africa Commission initiative and the efforts of Britain and France to campaign on African debt, but told the BBC that more needed to be done to help nations like Zambia meet development obligations.

The Africa Commission, launched by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, calls on developed nations to double aid to Africa, adding £30bn ($50bn) a year over 10 years.
OneWorld Africa