African Debt—Is Wiping the Slate Clean a Good Idea?

Britain's finance minister, Gordon Brown, is proposing that the G7 countries cancel Africa's debts to Western banks. Will this move give Africa the economic boost it needs to finally get off the ground?

by Melvin Rhodes

It sounds reasonable enough, but will it work? Gordon Brown, the British chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister), is proposing that the G7 countries (the seven richest countries of the world) cancel the debts of the poorest countries of Africa.

A few months ago I was in England sitting with some friends in a charming English country garden. The subject of Africa came up. Then it was how best to help with the limited aid available.

Some Western nations are quite generous with their aid, but recipient nations in Africa were critical of what the aid was to be used for. So one individual present echoed the solution repeated by many commentators that the African leaders themselves—the people on the ground—were best placed to make the decision on how the money should be spent. Again, it sounds reasonable enough, but will it work?

Richard Dowden has had decades of experience working in Africa, including eight years as Africa editor for The Independent (United Kingdom) and six years as Africa editor of The Economist. He is now president of the British Royal African Society. Mr. Dowden was interviewed on the BBC's World News program, shown nightly on many PBS stations across the United States.

His considered opinion was that canceling the debts of the African nations would not make any difference; that the real problems in Africa lay elsewhere.

Something certainly has to be done about Africa. African nations have now been independent for almost 50 years, but Africa remains the only continent to have gone backwards economically during that same period of time. Many people in Africa struggle on less than one dollar a day. Most don't even earn that—they are subsistence farmers eking out a meager existence on small pieces of land.

At independence, African nations had no debts. Many had considerable assets left by their former European rulers, money that was often squandered in the first flush of independence, wasted on grandiose prestigious projects that were not sustainable.

Read the full article at www.wnponline.org/wnp/wnp0503/africandebt.htm

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