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Bob Geldof has done an unusual service of getting the key western countries to focus public attention on Africa at the G8 summit. This poses a difficulty for those who see the harm that this kind of focus does to the continent. It conceals the root cause of many of the problems of the continent and perpetuates a view of a continent that is unable to solve its problems. The problems are easy enough to state: complicity between the West and the corrupt leaders who have consistently pillaged the continent; reinforcement of the dependency culture that aid plus neo-liberal economic reform will redeem the continent from poverty, thus maintaining the pauperisation of Africans; suppressing radical people-centred alternative economic opinions opposed to the World Bank / IMF economic orthodoxy; and the subversion of the social and economic development in the interest of repayment of odious debt.

While we accept that good governance is self-evidently desirable, it is also true that the West has been and is still complicit in the corruption that they now disavow. In instances where Africans have democratically elected promising leaders, Western governments have undermined or conspired in their political elimination and replaced them with puppet regimes. The Democratic Republic of Congo is a classic example of this phenomenon. In spite of being duly elected and the preferred choice of his people, the West conspired to eliminate Patrice Lumumba and replaced him with Mobutu Sese Seko. It is therefore impossible to understand the economic and political circumstances in the Congo today without a knowledge of this history. We pose the question: how can it be that the country with the most natural resources in Africa is still amongst the poorest and least developed? Other examples could be cited to show that Africa’s real interests were stymied by the West’s activities in Africa.

We believe that Africa needs neither conditional aid, charity nor pity. Western governments should be held to account for the exploitation of the continent and to make reparations for the pillage that they have inflicted.

Signed:

Patricia Daley, Fellow, Jesus College Oxford
Firoze Manji, Editor Pambazuka News
Paul Okojie, Senior Lecturer in Law, Manchester Metropolitan University and a member of the International Governing Council of the Centre for Democracy and Development
Peter da Costa, PhD Candidate, SOAS, London
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, General_Secretary, Global Pan African Movement
Susan Akono, writer
Abiodun Onadipe, Independent Consultant
Rotimi Sankore, Coordinator of CREDO for Freedom of Expression and Associated Rights

An edited version of this letter first appeared in the Guardian July 4 2005