Demba Moussa Dembele, African Forum on Alternatives
May 28, 2005

In the lead up to the G8 summit at Gleneagles, Scotland, this July – where Africa is expected to be a main focus of discussion – Demba Moussa Dembele, of the African Forum on Alternatives, cautions Africans to curb their expectations. “African countries have seen a string of initiatives aimed at ‘solving’ their debt crisis,” he said. “When one
reads between the lines, one finds … the same platitudes heard many times before – promises of ‘debt relief,’ but on a ‘case by case’ basis and with strings attached in the form of the usual conditionalities.” For instance, for a country to qualify for debt relief, continues Dembele, it must have “sound, accountable and transparent institutions.” “We all know what this means – a state and public institutions able to implement neo-liberal policies,” he said. The emphasis on “good governance” and especially on eliminating
“corruption,” said Dembele, tends to mislead world public opinion. “It puts the responsibility for the failure of structural adjustment programmes and their disastrous effects on the shoulders of ‘corrupt,’ ‘inefficient,’ ‘predatory’ states,” he said, adding, “this is consistent with the IMF and the World Bank’s attempts to mask their overwhelming responsibility in the abject poverty affecting most of the developing world.” Loans given by western creditors to corrupt African regimes that were used for the “repression and even murder of their own citizens, with the complicity of bilateral and multilateral creditors” and funds looted “by dictators and kept in Western banks” that have accumulated as public debt are “odious and illegitimate,” charged Dembele. “Accordingly, the African people don’t owe that debt and so-called ‘creditors’ have no right to claim it,” he said. “Africa does not need charity and handouts, but justice and fairness.”