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G8
G8 & Africa. Is exploitation something that
just happens?
If you believe the current campaign, debt relief and the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland (6-8 July), will provide the magic wand to turn Africa from the land of want to the land of plenty. Debt relief is a good and welcoming thing, but unless the current world economic order put in place after the Second World War and which has ensured Africa’s subjugation, is thoroughly reformed or dismantled altogether, debt relief and even fair trade will only amount to a tinkering of an exploitative order that has no place in the 21st century. If Africa is to be truly helped and poverty made history, now is the time for the big powers to go the whole hog.
There is one British columnist, George Monbiot, who writes for The Guardian, a man everyone should read. Whatever he writes is gold. The above headline is borrowed from him, from his piece published by The Guardian on 21 June 2005. If the West had 10 columnists of his intellectual and moral fibre, the world would undoubtedly be a much better place.
Over the past few weeks, thousands of reams of paper, if not a whole rainforest, and hundreds of hours of airtime on both radio and TV have been expended on Africa in the run-up to the G8 Summit in Gleneagles. The commentaries reached a crescendo with the G8 finance ministers’ announcement in London on 11 June of debt cancellation for 14 African countries. All of a sudden, Bob Geldof and Bono (the two rock stars who have led the campaign for debt forgiveness) and Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and even dithering George Bush have become the new angels on whose wings Africa will fly blissfully to the magical Promised Land of no poverty and gnashing of teeth. (Before we go further, why would Geldof not invite African musicians to the Live8 Concert until pressurised? And the event is supposed to help Africans!)
Anyway, there is no doubt that the debt write-off for the 14 African countries is a damn good thing. And all those who worked so hard for it deserve Africa’s and everybody’s congratulations. The problem, however, arises when people try to make it look as if this debt relief and the Gleneagles Summit will be the magic wand to save Africa for all time.
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