Open letter to IMF managing director:
'Africa needs to forge a new dream'
Africans are striving for democracy, but their hopes may be
dashed by increasing poverty and a "much greater marginalization of
Africa in the process of economic globalization," warn Ms. Marie Angélique
Savané and Mr. Hakim Ben Hammouda, representing the Council for the
Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), one of the
continent's foremost academic bodies. To avoid further misery and democracy's
derailment, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other multilateral
financial institutions must be more open to African aspirations, they declare
in an open letter to IMF Managing Director Horst Köhler, released during
his early July visit to Dakar, Senegal, where CODESRIA is headquartered.
Africans have "followed to the letter the prescriptions
that the Messiahs of your institution have forcefully recommended,"
Ms. Savané and Mr. Hammouda say. "Economies have been liberalized,
our states' involvement in economic regulation has been reduced, public
enterprises have been privatized, the dynamics of growth have been reoriented
toward the international market. Our governments have progressively ceded
their economic sovereignty to donors, with your institution and the World
Bank in the front ranks."
The open letter urged Mr. Köhler during his visit to
Senegal to walk through the streets and visit schools, health clinics and
villages. "Our failures should lead you to reevaluate the policies
and development strategies your institution has recommended to our countries,
in the sad vocabulary of structural adjustment." The authors warn that
such widespread misery is leading many to question the value of democracy,
and to engage in desperate and destructive violence.
"Africa needs to forge a new dream and new plans capable
of restoring hope to our populations," they conclude. The IMF can help
by cancelling the continent's foreign debt, supporting the work of African
experts, and permitting African governments "the capacity to master
their own destinies."
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