Africa: key facts and resources

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Key facts

A Cycle of Debt

The origins of the debt crisis in Africa lie in the rapid rise in oil prices in the 1970s, which gave banks large amounts of cash available for loans at a time when interest rates were relatively low. But rising oil prices put pressure on African government budgets, and a rapid rise in interest rates and falling commodity prices made debt repayments increasingly expensive. In addition, many loans were made to undemocratic and corrupt regimes, many were for the purchase of weapons or other purposes far removed from the eradication of poverty, and many were tied to the purchase of goods and services from the lending country.[1]

As the amount of unpaid - and increasingly unpayable - debt grew, assistance was given, with the result that through the 80s and 90s commercial debt - money owed to banks - largely became money owed to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as debt was reprocessed. New loans were given either to repay old debts, or simply to keep countries going - on condition that specific economic policies were put in place under the highly controversial Structural Adjustment Programmes, widely assessed as having had a seriously negative impact on the lives and prospects for the poorest people of Africa.[2]

By the mid-90s, therefore, as the HIV/AIDS epidemic exploded, many countries were paying more in debt service than they were on the health and education of their own people, and the poorest countries were often attempting to make repayments for loans from which they had received no benefit, often contracted and stolen by regimes now removed from office.[3]

Even after various rounds of debt reduction, sub-Saharan Africa still pays out more on debt service than it spends on health (around three per cent of its annual income). For every US$2 Africa currently receives in aid, it pays back nearly US$1 in debt payments.[4]

The IMF has attempted a number of development strategies for Africa ranging from export-led development to import substitution to "getting the fundamentals right" to the latest of programmes, which now entails a focus on governance and accountability. The link between poverty, aid and debt relief seems intuitive, but the gap in policy and programmes remains wide. The failure of these policies being self evident; as Africa's mounting debt burden is also accompanied by the awareness that it remains the poorest region in the world.[5]

Instead of triggering a virtuous spiral of growth and prosperity, structural adjustment saddled Africa with low investment, increased unemployment, reduced social spending, reduced consumption, and low output, all combining to create a vicious cycle of stagnation and decline.[6]

A cursory glance at Africa's debt profile shows that the continent received some $540 billion in loans and paid back some $550 billion in principal and interest between 1970 and 2002. Yet Africa remained with a debt stock of $295 billion. For its part, SSA received $294 billion in disbursements and paid $268 billion in debt service, but remains with a debt stock of some $210 billion. Discounting interest and interest on arrears, further payment of outstanding debt would represent a reverse transfer of resources.[7]

Under SAPs, Africa's external debt has increased by more than 500% since 1980 to $333 billion today. SAPs have transferred $229 billion in debt payments from Sub-Saharan Africa to the West since 1980. This is four times the region's 1980 debt. In the past decade alone, African countries have paid their debt three times over yet they are three times as indebted as ten years ago. Of Sub-Saharan Africa's 44 countries, 33 are designated heavily indebted poor countries by the World Bank. Africa, the world's poorest region, pays the richest countries $15 billion every year in debt servicing.[8]

Among the 20 African countries that have reached ‘completion point' in the debt cancellation process, 11 are now facing high to moderate risk of debt distress through reaccumulation of debt.[9]

There is strong resentment in many parts of Africa over these debt obligations, in part because much of the debt was incurred by unelected leaders supported by the very countries now receiving money to cover the service of those debts - and who, many Africans feel, are now using debt as a lever to dictate policy to the continent.[10]

(Un)fair Trade

Mismanagement and corruption aside, the truth has to be faced that the most significant reason for the debt is the unequal trade relations between Africa and the industrialised countries. There is a structured, or systemic, relationship between the products exported by Africa and those imported that ensures that Africa has to go on producing more and more of the same to get less and less of the imports from the rich countries. In other words, it is a "no win" situation for Africa embedded within the system itself.[11]

Seen in a historical context, Africa's trade has gone through three distinct phases. Prior to the early 1960s, when many African countries gained independence, African trade policy was defined by the colonial Powers. Trade was essentially a two-way relationship between African countries and their metropoles, whereby primary commodities were exported and manufactured products imported. The trade structure of African countries during this period was driven by the interests of the colonial Powers.[12]

In the period from the 1960s to the 1980s, the trade policies of many countries in Africa were informed by the doctrine of import-substitution industrialization. For example, Burundi, Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, the United Republic of Tanzania, and Zambia all adopted inward-oriented policies with significant trade restrictions. This strategy advocated the protection of the domestic market from foreign competition in order to promote domestic industrial production. Import-substitution industrialization was widely accepted in the 1960s and 1970s as a viable policy package to help developing countries achieve structural transformation and lessen their dependence on primary products.[13]

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a combination of factors created a large-scale economic crisis in sub-Saharan Africa... In response to the economic crisis in Africa, the international financial institutions advocated a policy package of market-oriented reforms, of which trade liberalization was an integral part.[14]

These institutions [the IMF and World Bank], backed by large donors and strengthened by the desperate need of African countries for convertible currency to service their external debt obligations, were able to propagate market-oriented policy packages, usually referred to as "structural adjustment programmes", within many African countries. As of the mid-1980s, and often as part of the programmes, these countries gradually started to liberalize their trade policies. This unilateral liberalization trend is ongoing and indeed picked up speed with the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 and the multilateral trade obligations enshrined in its agreements for African countries that are members.[15]

Kicking Away the Ladder?

The most industrialized countries in the world have actually developed under conditions opposite to those imposed by the World Bank and IMF on African governments. The US and the countries of Western Europe accorded a central role to the state in economic activity, and practiced strong protectionism, with subsidies for domestic industries. Under World Bank and IMF programs, African countries have been forced to cut back or abandon the very provisions which helped rich countries to grow and prosper in the past.[16]

Developed countries did not get to where they are now through the policies and institutions that they recommend to the developing countries today. Most of them used actively ‘bad' trade and industrial policies, such as infant industry protection and export subsidies - practices these days that are frowned upon, if not actively banned by the WTO.[17]

 African countries were made to reduce their rates of protection at a pace three times as fast as the countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This has left the continent ridiculously open, relative to its stage of development.[18]

Shrinking Policy Space

In addition to denying African countries trading opportunities and depressing the incomes of small farmers, many provisions in WTO rules restrict African governments' ‘policy space' or room for manoeuvre in domestic policy making. Under the Agreement on Agriculture (AOA), TRIPS, Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMs), and other WTO agreements, officials are constrained in terms of the types of pro-development policies that they can enact in the areas of agriculture, tariffs, investment, and intellectual-property rights. Worse, in order to implement these agreements and fund compliance with hostile trade rules, poor countries are required to shift large sums of money away from investments in health care, education, or essential infrastructure. Moreover, WTO agreements, once agreed, are nearly impossible to revise, even when negative implications for development become evident, as happened with the TRIPS Agreement.[19]

African countries must be allowed to regulate trade in agricultural products, to protect food security and rural development, and to foster long-term economic development... The aggressive market opening urged by rich countries in the [WTO] talks [prevents] African governments from using tariffs strategically, by locking them into application of very low tariffs.[20]

Trade Marginalisation, Dependency and Capital Outflows

The growth of international trade has done little to slow the marginalisation of Sub-Saharan Africa. While trade has risen as a share of GDP- from 40% to 55% since 1990-the region's share (excluding South Africa) of world exports has fallen to 0.3%. Today, the share of world exports of Sub-Saharan Africa, with 689 million people, is less than one-half that of Belgium, with 10 million people.[21]

In the last few decades, Africa has seen its share of world trade fall from six per cent in 1980 to less than 2 per cent in 2002.[22]

During 1960-1980, Sub Saharan Africa's GDP per capita grew by 36%; in the 1980-2000 period it actually fell by 15%.[23]

Africa has been a net exporter of capital for much of the 1980s and 1990s. Trade and finance liberalisation have been associated with increased capital flight from Africa. The problem has been compounded by reduced aid to Africa during the 1990s.[24]

Commodity dependence has condemned poor countries to dependence on declining and highly volatile prices, in a market increasingly controlled by small numbers of international trading companies or Western retailers.[25]

Rural poverty in sub-Saharan Africa is exacerbated by dependence on the export of a small number of agricultural commodities, many of which face volatile and falling world prices. In 2002-2003, for example, a collapse in coffee prices contributed to the Ethiopian food crisis that same year. Part of the problem is that the IMF and World Bank have actively promoted export-led growth throughout the developing world, not least to pay debt obligations, which has led to increased supply and global price falls in crops like cocoa, sugar and coffee. Countries also find it hard to move into the manufacture and sale of processed products, which would have more stable prices, due to rich-country trade barriers.[26]

From 1980 to 2000, the price of sugar fell by 77 per cent, cocoa by 71 per cent, coffee by 64 per cent and cotton by 47 per cent. Africa's export prices are nearly four times more volatile than those of developed countries.[27]

For every $1 worth of high quality Arabica coffee from Tanzania sold in a coffeehouse in the United States, a farmer now receives less than 1 cent.[28]

Aid for Africa?

Sub-Saharan Africa is the world's most aid-dependent region.[29]

With the exception of Cameroon and Kenya, net aid as a share of central government expenditures is over 50%; for example in Ghana and Malawi, it is 57% and Mozambique, 84%. This dependency on financial resources for the general functioning of the respective governments places emphasis on the need to analyze the effectiveness of the aid, with a specific enquiry into why it has not accomplished what was intended.[30]

The more debilitating impact of development aid is what it does to the mentality of the African elite and to the democratisation and accountable governance process. Governments have developed the myth that their economies cannot survive without aid. In reality it is their governments and the patronage systems that maintain them which are under threat without the aid machinery.[31]

Another concern is the continuation of tied aid linking ODA with the purchase of goods and services from the donor country. This reduces the value of aid to recipients by 25-40%, because countries are obliged to buy uncompetitively priced imports.[32]

More than $12 billion of aid to developing countries is tied (or partially tied) to export purchases from donor countries. This includes most technical and emergency assistance. For example, in 2001, only 30% of Canada's ODA was untied. Between 1995 and 1999 the US on average gave less than 25% untied aid annually.[33]

Tied aid has, rather than induce good governance, fuelled intra-state tensions as recipient governments found themselves neither able to fulfil their electoral developmental pledges to their citizens nor deliver on basic socio-economic needs.[34]

Finally, African economic policy relating to trade, such as moves to liberalise sectors of the economy, is too often a condition of receiving aid from donors. If they are to be accountable to their own citizens African governments have to be allowed the space to make their own decisions.[35]

The fact that most donors insist on the triad of neoliberalism-privatization, liberalization and deregulation means that aid recipient countries become more accountable to them than their local populace that continues to languish in poverty and economic quagmire.[36]

Poverty, Inequality and Economic Decline

Trade liberalisation has cost sub-Saharan Africa US$272 billion over the past 20 years. Had they not been forced to liberalise as the price of aid, loans and debt relief, sub- Saharan African countries would have had enough extra income to wipe out their debts and have sufficient left over to pay for every child to be vaccinated and go to school.[37]

In 2005, 51% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa were living on less than $1.25 a day.[38]

The 40 percent of the world's population living on less than US$2 a day accounts for 5 percent of global income. The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income. In the case of sub-Saharan Africa, a whole region has been left behind: it will account for almost one-third of world poverty in 2015, up from one-fifth in 1990.[39]

If average incomes grow by 3% in Sub-Saharan Africa and in high-income Europe, for example, the absolute change will be an extra $51 per person in Africa and an extra $854 per person in Europe.[40]

Reflecting two decades of declining average incomes, Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for a rising share of the poorest 20%. Since 1980 that share has more than doubled from 15% to 36%, and it is still rising.[41]

Africa's estimated per capita income in 1990 was at the same level it had been in 1960. Per capita incomes for most Sub Saharan countries fell by 25% during the 1980s and for 18 countries these incomes were lower in 1999 than in 1975. In 1960, Sub-Saharan Africa's per capita income was about 1/9 of that in high-income OECD countries; by 1998, it had deteriorated dramatically to about 1/18.[42]

Excluding grants and foreign direct investment, African countries have been transferring resources on a net basis to the developed countries since 1985; the figure going from a low of $1.7 billion in 1985 to nearly $7 billion in 1997.[43]

The developing world is waiting for some recognition that economic growth and poverty reduction are not one and the same. They may coincide but are not necessary conditions for each to occur.[44]

Were high-income countries to stop growing today and Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa to continue on their current growth trajectories, it would take Latin America until 2177 and Africa until 2236 to catch up.[45]

Securing Basic Needs

At the present rate of progress, Sub-Saharan Africa will only reach the starting point - the satisfaction of basic needs - towards the year 2353.[46]

In 2008, 29% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa was undernourished.[47]

Sub-Saharan Africa counted 100 million more extremely poor people in 2005 than in 1990, and the poverty rate remained above 50 per cent.[48] Across the continent as a whole the number of poor people nearly doubled over the period of globalisation, from 200 million in 1981 to 380 million in 2005.[49]

We live in a world where rich nations spend as much as the entire income of all the people in Africa subsidising the unnecessary production of unwanted food - to the tune of almost US$1 billion a day. While in Africa hunger is a key factor in more deaths than all the continent's infectious diseases put together.[50]

Today Africa is the poorest region in the world. Half of the population live on less than one dollar a day. Life expectancy is actually falling. People live, on average, to the age of just 46. In India and Bangladesh, by contrast, that figure is now a staggering 17 years higher.[51]

While African countries urgently need to increase spending on health care, education, and sanitation, IMF structural adjustment programs have forced these countries to reduce such spending. In African countries with ESAF programs, the average amount of per capita government spending on education actually declined between 1986 and 1996.[52]

More than 300 million people - some 42 per cent of Africa's population - still do not have access to safe water. Around 60 per cent still do not have access to basic sanitation.[53]

72 million children worldwide were denied the right to education in 2007. Almost half of these children live in sub-Saharan Africa, followed by Southern Asia, home to 18 million out-of-school children.[54]

One in six children in Africa dies before reaching their fifth birthday. This is largely because health care delivery systems are at the point of collapse following years of debilitating under-investment. Average spending on health per person in Africa in 2001 was between US$13 and US$21; in the developed world it is more than US$2,000 per person per year.[55]

Africa loses an average of 70,000 skilled personnel a year to developed countries in [a continuing] brain drain. Zambia has lost all but 400 of its 1,600 doctors in recent years.[56]

In 2001, 166.2 million people, or 72 per cent of Africa's urban residents, were living in slums. This shocking figure is accompanied by severe developmental problems, illustrated by the continent's poor life expectancy, as well as high levels of infant and child mortality, HIV/AIDS prevalence and illiteracy, particularly among women and girls.[57]

The lack of improved sanitation is the most important feature of slums in the African urban context. About 57 per cent of urban Africans do not have access to improved forms of sanitation. In some countries, this figure exceeds 80 per cent of the population, as in Niger (88 per cent), Sierra Leone (82 per cent) and Mali (81 per cent).[58]

According to the UN Development Programme (UNDP), 80% of low human development countries-those with low income, low literacy, low life expectancy and high population growth rates-are in Africa. Average life expectancy for Sub Saharan Africa is only 47 years (the lowest in the world), a drop of 15 years since 1980. Forty per cent of the population suffers from malnutrition that causes low birth weight among infants and stunts growth in children. In 2000, 30% of children under five were underweight in Sub- Saharan Africa; thirty-seven percent of such children were under height.[59]

Food Security and Impact of Climate Change

At the time of decolonization in the 1960s, Africa was not just self-sufficient in food but was actually a net food exporter, its exports averaging 1.3 million tons a year between 1966-70. Today, the continent imports 25% of its food, with almost every country being a net food importer. Hunger and famine have become recurrent phenomena, with the last three years alone seeing food emergencies break out in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Southern Africa, and Central Africa.[60]

Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region to have actually lost international market share in agriculture trade: its share declined from six per cent in 1990 to around five per cent in 2003. Farmers selling their produce domestically face depressed prices as a result of rich-country dumping, which has forced many to abandon farming altogether. The unfair rules of agricultural trade have grave implications for poverty reduction and food security in Africa.[61]

Africa's social and economic development is now even more in danger because climate change threatens to undermine the integrity of the continent's rich but fragile ecosystems In Africa, these natural systems form the foundation of the economy of most countries, from which the majority of the population derive their livelihood.[62]

With just 15 percent of the world population, rich countries account for 45 percent of CO2 emissions. Sub-Saharan Africa also accounts for around 11 percent of the world population, but represents 2 percent of global emissions.[63]

Martinez-Alier and Jyoti Parikh of the UN International Panel on Climate Change argue that based upon the Third World's role as a carbon sink, an estimated annual subsidy of $75 billion flows South to North. Africans are most exploited because non-industrialised economies have not begun to utilize more than a small fraction of what should be due under any fair framework of global resource allocation such as carbon emissions.[64]

By 2020, between 75 million and 250 million more people in sub-Saharan Africa could have their livelihoods and human development prospects compromised by a combination of drought, rising temperature and increased water stress.[65]

A number of countries in Africa already face semi-arid conditions that make agriculture challenging, and climate change will be likely to reduce the length of growing season as well as force large regions of marginal agriculture out of production. Projected reductions in yield in some countries could be as much as 50% by 2020, and crop net revenues could fall by as much as 90% by 2100, with small-scale farmers being the most affected. This would adversely affect food security in the continent.[66]

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Further resources

Organisations

• ActionAid Africa
• Africa Action
• Africa Faith and Justice Network (AFJN) 
• AfricaFocus
• African Development Bank (AfDB) 
• African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD) 
• African Initiatives
• African Union
• Christian Aid Africa
• Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) 
• FARM Africa
• Institute for Security Studies
• Justice Africa
• New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) 
• NIZA
• Office of the Special Advisor on Africa (OSAA) 
• Southern African Development Community (SADC) 
• Third World Network Africa
• TransAfrica Forum
• UN Economic Commission on Africa (UNECA) 
• UN Millennium Development Goals Africa Steering Group 
• United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) - Africa 

Campaigns

• Action Aid Campaigns
• Africa-Wide Civil Society Climate Change Initiative for Policy Dialogues (ACCID) 
• Campaign to Cancel Africa's Debt
• Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt 
• Control Arms Campaign
• End Poverty 2015: Millennium Campaign
• Fatal Transactions
• Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP)
• Global Witness
• Green Belt Movement 
• Jubilee 'Drop the Debt' Campaign
• La Via Campesina
• Oxfam Campaigns
• Publish What You Pay
• Resist AFRICOM
• Stop the Vulture Culture
• Traidcraft’s Stop EPAs Campaign

Reports

• A Review of Progression and Regression in Debt, Aid, Trade Relations, Global Governance and the MDGs
• A Rough Trade: The Role of Companies and Governments in the Angolan Conflict
• Africa – Up in Smoke 2
• Causing Hunger: An Overview of the Food Crisis in Africa
• DATA Report 2009: Monitoring the G8 Promise to Africa
• Economic Development in Africa 2004: Debt Sustainability: Oasis or Mirage?
• Hazardous to Health: The World Bank and IMF in Africa
• If Not Now, When? Urgent Recommendations on Debt Cancellation for a Strong and Prosperous Africa
• Impoverishing a Continent: The World Bank and the IMF in Africa
• Lending Policies of the IMF: HIPC and Debt Relief in Africa
• New Estimates of Capital Flight from Sub-Saharan African Countries: Linkages with External Borrowing and Policy Options
• Odious Lending: Debt Relief as if Morals Mattered
• Organic Agriculture and Food Security in Africa
• Our Common Interest: Report for the Commission for Africa
• Poverty Reduction or Poverty Exacerbation? World Bank Group Support for Extractive Industries in Africa
• Putting our House in Order: Recasting G8 Policy towards Africa
• Same Old Story: A Background Study on Natural Resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo
• State of the World's Cities 2004/5: Globalization and Urban Culture
• The Economics of Failure: The Real Cost of ‘Free’ Trade for Poor Countries
• The Other Side of the Coin: The UK and Corruption in Africa
• The World Bank and the IMF in Africa: Strategy and Routine in the Generation of a Failed Agenda
• Trade Traps: Why EU-ACP Economic Partnership Agreements Pose a Threat to Africa’s Development
• Unmasking the New Green Revolution in Africa: Motives, Player and Dynamics

Article

• A Leaking Ship: The Role of Debt, Aid and Trade
• Africa and the Making of Adjustment: How Economists Hijacked the Bank's Agenda
• Africa Falls Off the IMF Agenda (Again)
• Africa’s Debt: Who Owes Whom?
• Agrofuels: The Corporate Plunder of Africa
• Another Africa is Possible: The World Social Forum
• Big Pharma, Big Profits: Denying Access to AIDS Medication
• Climate Colonialism and the New Scramble for Africa
• Destroying African Agriculture
• Is Africa a Net Creditor? New Estimates of Capital Flight from Severely Indebted Sub-Saharan African Countries, 1970-1996
• Making Peace or Fueling War in Africa
• New African Resistance to Global Finance
• Root Causes of Peacelessness and Approaches to Peace in Africa
• The G8, Obama, and Food Insecurity in Africa
• The New Humanitarian Order

Books

• Against Global Capitalism: African Social Movements Confront Neoliberal Globalization
• Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism
• Climate Change in Africa
• Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa
• Ending Aid Dependence
• From Genocide to Continental War: The Congolese Conflict and the Crisis of Contemporary Africa
• From the Slave Trade to ‘Free’ trade: How Trade Undermines Democracy and Justice in Africa
• How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
• Looting Africa: The Economics of Exploitation
• Neoliberalism and Globalization in Africa: Contestations on the Embattled Continent
• Neoliberalism, Civil Society and Security in Africa
• The Betrayal Of Africa
• The Challenge for Africa
• The Debt Trap: The IMF and Third World
• The Trouble with Aid: Why Less Could Mean More for Africa
• Who Owes Who?

Resources

• ‘The Ravaging of Africa’ 
• Africa World Press 
• African Arguments – Book Series 
• All Africa News
• Amandla!
• Bank Information Centre (BIC) – Africa Programme 
• Commission for Africa 
• Concerned Africa Scholars 
• Food Sovereignty for Africa: A Challenge at Fingertips
• Foreign Policy In Focus Africa
• Human Rights Watch (Africa) 
• Looting Africa: Some Facts and Figures on Capital Flight
• Martin Khor: Structural Adjustment Explained 
• Mining and Conflict in Eastern DRC
• openDemocracy News Analysis (Africa) 
• Pambazuka News
• Project Syndicate – Into Africa series 
• Royal African Society – African Affairs Journal 
• UNCTAD Economic Development in Africa series 
• ‘Saviours and Survivors’

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References

[1] All Party Parliamentary Group on Heavily Indebted Poor Countries for the Commission for Africa, If not now, when? Urgent recommendations on debt cancellation for a strong and prosperous Africa, February 2005, p. 6.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Commission for Africa, Our Common Interest, March 2005, p. 28.

[5] Nancy Dubosse,  Lending Policies of the IMF: HIPC and Debt Relief in Africa, AFRODAD, January 2008, p. 4.

[6] Walden Bello, Destroying African Agriculture, Znet, 8th June, 2008.

[7] UNCTAD, Debt Sustainability: Oasis or Mirage?, 2004, p. 9.

[8] Asad Ismi, Impoverishing a Continent: The World Bank and the IMF in Africa, Halifax Initiative Coalition, July 2004, p. 12.

[9] ONE International, The DATA Report 2009: Monitoring the G8 promise to Africa, May 2009, p. 11.

[10] Commission for Africa, Our Common Interest, March 2005, pp. 27-28.

[11] Yash Tandon, Root Causes of Peacelessness and Approaches to Peace in Africa, ISGN, 1999, p. 12.

[12] UNCTAD, Economic Development in Africa 2008: Export Performance Following Trade Liberalization, Geneva: United Nations, 2008, p. 3

[13] Ibid. p. 3.

[14] Ibid. p. 4.

[15] Ibid. p. 5.

[16] Ann-Louise Colgan, Hazardous to Health: The World Bank and IMF in Africa, Africa Action Position Paper, April 2002.

[17] Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective, Anthem Press: London, 2005, p.2

[18] Charles Abugre, ‘Plugging the leaks - the role of debt, aid and trade', in Patrick Burnett & Firoze Manji (eds), From Slave Trade to ‘Free Trade': How Trade Undermines Justice and Democracy in Africa, Oxford: Fahuma Books, 2007, p. 17.

[19] Oxfam, Africa and the Doha Round: Fighting to keep development alive, Oxfam Briefing Paper 80, November 2005, p. 9.

[20] Ibid, p. 17.

[21] UNDP, Human Development Report 2005: International cooperation at a crossroads, 2005, p. 117.

[22] Commission for Africa, Our Common Interest, March 2005, p. 27.

[23] Asad Ismi, Impoverishing a Continent: The World Bank and the IMF in Africa, July 2004, p. 11.

[24] Christian Aid, The economics of failure: The real cost of ‘free' trade for poor countries, Christian Aid briefing paper, June 2005, p. 4.

[25] Oxfam, Africa and the Doha Round: Fighting to keep development alive, Oxfam Briefing Paper 80, November 2005, p. 20.

[26] Oxfam, Causing Hunger: An overview of the Food Crisis in Africa, Oxfam Briefing Paper 91, July 2006, p. 20.

[27] Commission for Africa, Our Common Interest, March 2005, p. 26.

[28] UNDP, Human Development Report 2005: International Cooperation at a Crossroads, 2005, p. 140.

[29] Ibid, p. 96.

[30] Nancy Dubosse,  Lending Policies of the IMF: HIPC and Debt Relief in Africa, AFRODAD, January 2008, pp. 1-2.

[31] Charles Abugre, A leaking ship: The Role of Debt, Aid, and Trade , Pambazuka,  2nd Feburary 2006.

[32] UNCTAD, Debt Sustainability: Oasis or Mirage?, 2004, p. 4.

[33] UNCTAD, Debt Sustainability: Oasis or Mirage?, 2004, pp. 35-36.

[34] AFRODAD, Reality Check on Development Aid: Security, Peace and Development Aid in Africa, Reality of Aid 2005/2006, p. 2.

[35] Commission for Africa, Our Common Interest, March 2005, p. 27.

[36] AFRODAD, Reality Check on Development Aid: Security, Peace and Development Aid in Africa, Reality of Aid 2005/2006, p. 2.

[37] Christian Aid, The Economics of Failure: The Real Cost of ‘Free' Trade for Poor Countries, Christian Aid briefing paper, June 2005, p. 1.

[38] United Nations, Millenium Development Goals Report 2009, New York, 2009, p. 7

[39] UNDP, Human Development Report 2007/2008: Fighting climate change, 2007, p. 25.

[40] UNDP, Human Development Report 2005: International cooperation at a crossroads, 2005, p. 37

[41] Ibid, p. 36.

[42] Asad Ismi, Impoverishing a Continent: The World Bank and the IMF in Africa, July 2004, pp. 11-12.

[43] Nancy Dubosse,  Lending Policies of the IMF: HIPC and Debt Relief in Africa, AFRODAD, January 2008, p. 2.

[44] Nancy Dubosse,  Lending Policies of the IMF: HIPC and Debt Relief in Africa, AFRODAD, January 2008, p. 12.

[45] UNDP, Human Development Report 2005: International cooperation at a crossroads, 2005, p. 37.

[46] Social Watch, Social Watch Report 2008: Rights is the Answer, 2008, p. 32.

[47] United Nations, Millenium Development Goals Report 2009, New York, 2009, p. 11.

[48] United Nations, Millenium Development Goals Report 2009, New York, 2009, p. 7

[49] See the latest World Bank statistics; Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion. The Developing World Is Poorer Than We Thought, But No Less Successful in the Fight against Poverty, The World Bank Development Research Group, August 2008. See also Adam Parsons, World Bank Poverty Figures: What Do They Mean?, Share The World's Resources, 15 September 2008.

[50] Commission for Africa, Our Common Interest, March 2005, p. 21.

[51] Commission for Africa, Our Common Interest, March 2005, p. 25.

[52] Robert Naiman and Niel Watkins, A Survey of the Impacts of IMF Structural Adjustment in Africa: Growth, Social Spending, and Debt Relief, CEPR, April 1999.

[53] Commission for Africa, Our Common Interest, March 2005, p. 45.

[54] United Nations, Millenium Development Goals Report 2009, New York, 2009, p. 15

[55] Commission for Africa, Our Common Interest, March 2005, p. 44.

[56] Commission for Africa, Our Common Interest, March 2005, p. 27.

[57] UN-HABITAT, State of the World's Cities 2004/2005: Trends in Sub-Saharan Africa,  UN-HABITAT, September 2004.

[58] UN-HABITAT, State of the World's Cities 2004/2005: Trends in Sub-Saharan Africa,  UN-HABITAT, September 2004.

[59] Asad Ismi, Impoverishing a Continent: The World Bank and the IMF in Africa, July 2004, p. 12.

[60] Walden Bello, Destroying African Agriculture, Znet, 8th June, 2008.

[61] Oxfam, Africa and the Doha Round: Fighting to keep development alive, Oxfam Briefing Paper 80, November 2005, p. 13.

[62] new economics foundation, Africa - Up in Smoke?, The second report from the Working Group on Climate Change and Development, June 2005, p. 6.

[63] UNDP, Human Development Report 2007/2008: Fighting climate change, 2007, p. 42.

[64] Patrick Bond, Dispossessing Africa's Wealth, Pambazuka News, Issue 227, 27th October 2007.

[65] UNDP, Human Development Report 2007/2008: Fighting climate change, 2007, p. 99.

[66] IPCC, Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment  Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, M.L. Parry, O.F. Canziani, J.P. Palutikof, P.J. van der Linden and C.E.Hanson,  (Eds), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2007, p. 435.