World Social Forum:  African Debt Campaigners Demand Firm Action for Africa

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  27 JANUARY 2005

Jubilee South Africa * Solidarity Africa Network in Action (Kenya) * Forum on African Alternatives (Senegal)

African debt campaigners meeting at the World Social Forum (WSF) in  Porto Alegre, Brazil learned with great interest of the high-profile  panel on Africa and its debt burden at the World Economic Forum, the  gathering of power elites held in Davos, Switzerland at the same time  as the WSF. The panel featured U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, South African President Thabo Mbeki, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, the world’s richest person, Bill Gates, and rock star Bono.

“We are pleased to see Mr. Clinton, Mr. Blair, and Mr. Gates taking an interest in the struggles of African peoples,” said Demba Moussa Dembele of the Forum on African Alternatives in Senegal.  “But will this meeting mean anything? We are tired of hearing noble speeches about our continent, no matter how famous the speaker.  Their pledges will be worse than meaningless unless fundamental changes are made in the global economic system and unless the huge debt burden that has  been forced on our people illegitimately is eliminated.  Fine words in the absence of firm action will placate some, but consign our needs to a heap of hypocritical and forgotten promises.”

Njoki Njoroge Njehu of Solidarity Action Network in Action (Kenya) added, “We are telling anyone who wishes to help Africa: We are not requesting charity; we are demanding justice.  Our continent has been exploited and abused by powerful outsiders for centuries.  After slavery and colonialism, the latest tool for imposing foreign interests on us is the lethal combination of debt and the economic conditions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.  We can no longer tolerate a system that demands the most impoverished continue to pay the wealthiest for the privilege o struggling to eat, to breathe, to live. We demand justice!”

Jubilee South Africa rejected the promises made for more attention to Africa.  “They have the power to do far more to change the discriminatory global economic system.  Every day they do not use that power is another day they expose their hypocrisy and participate in the abuse of Africa,” said M.P. Giyose, National Chairperson of Jubilee South Africa.  “We have no problem in agreeing with the position President Obasanjo has taken, maintaining that comprehensive debt cancellation is a prerequisite for any genuine progress in Africa. We hope that Mr. Blair learns from him.  But we would add that the cancellation will be effective only if it is done without externally-imposed conditions – the very measures that have devastated Africa.

New Voices on Globalization /  50 Years Is Enough Network: http://www.50years.org/