AfricaLet's free abillion slavesInternational Debtby Renato Kizito Sesana
What are the Kenyan churches doing in connection with the campaign Jubilee 2000?" One hears this question more and more from visitors who are also committed Christians. Often, Kenyan based church people addressed in such a way do not even understand what is the meaning of the question. In Europe and North America there is a campaign, led by the churches, for the cancellation of the external debt of the poor countries on the occasion of the year 2000. Title of the campaign varies from the emotionally charged "Let's free a billion slave" to the neutral "Jubilee 2000" but the aim remains the same: the total cancellation of the international debt that is crashing the poorest countries on Earth. It refers to the Biblical concept of Jubilee, whereby every seven years, and especially every 50 years, people are freed from the burdens and injustices that have built over the past, as it expressed in Leviticus 25:10. Facts and figures, even in the limited form allowed by a newspaper article, are always a powerful aid to understand a particular situation. With the input of some reliable statistics circulated by the World Council of Churches, in a pamphlet for Jubilee Year 2000, it is possible to grasp the dramatic implications of the international debt. According to the estimates of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), at the end of 1997, the total external debt of developing countries was at about $2,066 billion. In the same year, the same developing countries paid back to the countries and financial institution of the develop world $272 billion. So, each year, the developing countries pay to the west three times more in debt repayments than they receive on aid. Contrary to the usual belief, wealth is not moving from the rich to the poor countries, but from the poor to the rich. The World Bank identifies two categories of indebted countries: The heavily indebted and the moderately indebted. Forty five countries are considered severely indebted, 28 of them in Africa. Kenya is in the list, together with Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic,Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome' and Principe, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. Other nine African countries are considered moderately indebted, while Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Djibouti, Lesotho, Mauritius, Seychelles and Swaziland are basically debt free. Who is responsible if the external debt crisis in Africa has reach such a critical level? Creditor government and international lending institutions are responsible. They have pushed poor countries into this situation, when they had huge amounts of money and they needed to lend to keep world economy going. Banks lent to poor countries enormous amounts of money with little or no control over their use. In some cases, it was common knowledge that most of the funds would go back immediately in the Swiss bank accounts of the local "big man". Later, a sharp increase in interest rates aggravated the already fast deteriorating situation. But responsibility does not, of course, rest with creditors alone. African countries have borrowed to excess, failed to adopt sound economic and social policies, ignored the real needs of their people, squandered funds on poorly conceived and corruptly or ineptly administered projects.
Why is international debt a problem? In Uganda, the government spends only $3 per person each year on health, but $20-30 per person on debt repayments to creditors like the World Bank and IMF. From 1980 to 1992, the Third World countries, after repaying what they owed three times over, far from being less in debt, in fact owed 250 percent more than in 1980. Debtor countries have to be engaged in the policy; "everything for export at any price" in order to increase their income in hard currency. Devaluation of local currency pushes up prices of basic goods within the debtor countries - cereals, tea, coffee or cocoa - while salaries remain frozen. The total debt of Sub-Saharan Africa has almost tripled in the period 1980-96, from $85 to $235 billions. From each dollar earned by its population, 0.75 cents are owed as international debt.
Today, every African man, woman and child, even the children
newly born as you are reading this article, have an external
debt of more than $440. The debt burden makes it very difficult
for the poorest countries to attract investments for development.
The question asked by Julius Nyerere, former President of
Tanzania; "must we starve our children to pay our debts?" should
be in the mind of every responsible African leader.
Where did the money behind the international debt of the Third
World countries go? For instance, under the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko, the DRC (then Zaire) contracted an external debt of about $10 billion. Six billion went to build up the personal treasure of the same Mobutu, most of it kept in bank accounts of the western world.
What are the moral arguments for considering the debt, as a
whole, to be unjust?
Does debt cancellation mean that those responsible for the past accumulation of debt are given a new chance to make debts? The Vatican document on the international debt question, At the Service of the Human Community, published in 1986, states forcefully that: "The various groups in authority in the developing countries must accept having their actions and any responsibility they may have in their country's indebtedness scrutinised. Negligence in the setting up of suitable structures or abuses in the use of existing ones, tax fraud, corruption, currency speculation, national capital reserve drain, or kick-backs in international contracts... It is too easy to throw back on others responsibility for injustices, if at the same time one does not realise how each one shares in it personally, and how personal conversion is needed first. This applies to the Church as well." Foreign debt is the most apparent sign of an underlying disorder. Unless the deeper causes are addressed, any solution will be temporary and the debt trap will be set again. We need new structures of participation and accountability, structures which will promote the dignity of each one of us and hold us responsible when we fail.
What can be done by the Churches in Africa?
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