NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/5339

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From: [e-mail] (Rich Winkel)
Subject: IMF holocaust sweeps Africa
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/** gen.women: 102.0 **/
** Topic: IMF holocaust sweeps Africa: 30 mi **
** Written  4:46 pm  Jul 23, 1992 by gn:enyo in cdp:gen.women **

African nations can expect a sharp reduction in financial assistance
from the World Bank unless they keep up efforts to put their economies
in order, World Bank officials  said. "Africans have to be impressed
that they have a lot to lose if they allow financial discipline to
disappear", a senior World Bank official said. "If countries do not
stay on the reform path we are not going to give them much money,
the bank won't give much to countries that are not doing all they can. "
(Extract from Reuter. Oct 17  1991.)

This Reuter points directly to the acute crisis now facing Africa's
450 million people, and the source of that crisis: the systematic
denial of technology and capital goods to the African nations.
Instead of nuclear power plants, money to carry out infrastructure
projects that would enable Africa to become food self-sufficient,
and other obvious inputs, Africa, after centuries of slavery
and colonialism, has been treated to no more than a succession of
"stabilisation" and " structural readjustment programmes", and
endless lectures from the IMF and World BAnk on the necessaity
for "fiscal discipline."

The Report of the UN Sec. Gen. on "The Economic Crisis in Africa,
prepared for the session of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Whole of the
U.N. General Assembly Sept.3-13, 1991, offered ample evidence
that the policy dogmas of the Fund and the World Bank have failed miserably,
to the point that Africa is a continent today that stands on the brink of
total extinction.

Aside from the warnings that millions face starvation, it is rlready a fact,
as reported by the United Nations Human Development Report 1991,
that 5,620,000 children under the age of five died in Africa in 1990.

Especially for those children who lived beyond the immediate hours of
infancy, their deaths were often painful and slow, as they died of
diseases that are mostly curable or preventable at a cost of a few dollars
or even pennies.

The holocaust is taking place in Africa now.

This is not the result of so-called overpopulation.
Africa's population density is 451 persons per 1,000 hectares. With the
exception of the US (272/1,000 hects.) or Canada (29), Africa's
population density certainly compares favourably in 1990 to such
industrialized nations as Japan (3,280), France(1,030), (West)Germany
(2,206), or even Great Britain, headquarters of the world
malthusian movement (2,357).

The problem is not population density, but energy density, a parameter
which shows that true economic deficit imposed on the continent
by the denial of technology and infrastrucutral development. In
Africa, annual per-hectare energy consumption (1,000 kcal/hact. of
usable land) is an average of 2,887, compared to the world average of
16,463 and western Europe's average of 89,447 (1986 figures). While
Afria's average energy consumption per person per year is 6,439
thousand kcal, averge per capita energy consumption in North America
is 83,900 thousand kcals. The world average is 22,200 thousand kcals
per person.

Instead of a policy of development of Africa, the governments of the
western industrial nations, with the IMF and World Bank as enforcers,
have imposed a policy of extraction. For the last 30 years, the
Afican countries hav been systematically discouraged from taking
steps to ensure either their food self-sufficiency or industrialisation.
Countries have instead been encouraged to become "export-oriented",
basing their economies on one or few cash crop or raw materials.
The earnings of foreign exchange then becomes contingent upon the
prices of the major export crops, etc., which prices are set in London
primarily. At the same time, debt is piled up on the country to the
point that the major part of export earnings are funneled back to
pay the debt.  Capital never finds its way into the actual development
of the economy.

This cycle has now brought Afica into a downward spiral in which the national
economies of many African nations are on the brink of collapse.

THE SUBSIDY FROM AFRICA.

A review of the data complied for the U.N. General Assembly,
"Appraisal of the Implementation of the U.N. program of Action for African
Economic Recovery and Development 1986-1990," shows that, despite the
starvation and disease afflicting much of the African population, Africa is
subsidizing the industrialised countries financially.

For example, in the five-year period under consideration by the U.N.,
Africa paid out to the IMF more that it received in loans. For sub-
Saharan countries, the flow to the IMF was $676 million a year.

In the same five years, Africa's stock of debt rose from $203.7 billion in
1986 to $271.7 billion in 1990. As a percentage of Africa's GNP, it
represent an increase in the burden from 54% to 109% in 1990 !

Africa's export volume rose 2.5% per year from 1986 to 1990. But the purchasing
power of these exports fell sharply, averging 54% during 1986-90 compared
with 76% in 1981-85, using 1980 as 100%. "No other region of the world
experienced such a catastrophic loss," says the U.N report.

Propelled by the necessity to pay the debt, non-food agricultural
production rose 3.2% over the years 1986-90. Production of export
crops such as cocoa, cotton and sugar all rose during the
reported period.

In real terms, sub-Saharan African countries were forced to export
36% more to earn a dollar of foreign exchange since 1980.
That dollar was than handed over to the international creditors,
beginnning with the IMF.

In the same 1986-90 period, capital flight is estimated to have totaled
another %30 billion.

THE HUMAN RESULT.

The result of this extraction upon the African countries is the contraction
of their productive economies.

On average inAfrica, from 1986-90, the years under consideration by the U.N,
real wages declined by 30% and the level of real public sector wages
declined by more than half, according to the U.N statistics.
In some countries, the decline was as steep as 75-80%

According to the U.N. report, official unemployment grew at an average
of 10% per year between 1896-90. Even th U.N. report notes that this
precipitous decline in real wages was "partly due to structural adjustment
policy measures" - imposed by the IMF.

Food self-sufficiency for African nations continued to decline. No fewer
than 34 Afican countries reported a decline in per capita food production
since 1986. The ratio of food supply to consumption requirements,
indexed at 100 for 1979-81, was estimated at 85 in 1990. For Algeria,
Egypt, Congo, Cameroon, Niger, Togo, Rwanda, Burundi, Burkina Faso,
Nigeria, Guinea and The Gamib, dependency on food imports more than
doubled from 1971.

The result is starvation, as the IMF official warned. In 1989, there
were 150 million severely undernourished people in Africa - 70 million more
than there were in the mid 1970s, says the U.N. report. A full 40%
of Africa's pre-school children are suffering from acute protein
energy deficiency - up from 25% in 1985. In 1990, an estimated
26.6% of Africa's children were underweight, 53.3% were stunted, and
10.2% were wasting.

"Aside from drought and desertification", the U.N. report says, "other causes
of malnutrition in Africa included the removal of food and agricultural
subsidies at a time when household incomes were declining"- that is a
measure of "fiscal discipline" demanded by the IMF.

By Linda de Hoyos 1991.
** End of text from cdp:gen.women **