Make looting history

Some 120 years ago, in 1884-85,, European governments met in Berlin to 'negotiate' the carving up of Africa - a meeting that in essence was very little different to this week's G8 meeting in Gleneagles. Had Bob Geldof and Comic Relief been around at the time, would they have held pop concerts in Paris, London, Berlin, Brussels, Lisbon etc. calling on their rulers to be nice about carving up the continent, to ensure that a few more crumbs fell off the table into the mouths of the poor while they carried out their project of occupation, colonisation, military subjugation, looting and genocidal slaughter? The very idea sounds absurd because we have the benefit of hindsight.

But why are things any different today? In many post-colonial countries real per capita GDP has fallen and welfare gains achieved since independence in areas like food consumption health and education have been reversed. The statistics are disturbing. In Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole per-capita incomes dropped by 21% in real terms between 1981 and 1989. Madagascar and Mali now have per capita incomes of $799 and $753 down from $1,258 and $898 25 years ago. In 16 other Sub-Saharan countries per capita incomes were also lower in 1999 than in 1975. Nearly one quarter of the world's population, but nearly 42% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, live on less than $1 a day. Levels of inequality have also increased dramatically but worldwide. In 1960 the average income of the top 20% of the world's population was 30 times that of the bottom 20%. By 1990 it was 60 times, and by 1997, 74 times that of the lowest fifth. Today the assets of the top three billionaires are more than the combined GNP of all least developed countries and their 600 million people.

Since the early 1980s, economic and social policies of African countries have been subverted to serve the interests of the west - the repayment of debt, and the opening up of the countries to the needs of voracious international capital. Africa has abundant natural resources, yet their exploitation by capital has not lead to the development of the forces of production nor to the improvement of life chances or life expectancy for the majority. Instead, the countries with the richest resources are the ones that have been torn apart by civil war (Angola, DRC, Sierra Leone, Liberia etc) or subjected to gross environmental degradation (as in Nigeria).

The western media and the western 'development' agencies feed us with a diet that makes us think that "poverty" is the problem. But poverty is not the problem. It is the looting, theft and frank exploitation that forces Africa's people into destitution, that impoverishes them, and prevents millions from realising their full potential as humans.

Just look at the looting involving aid and debt. According to the OECD, total resource flows to developing countries between 1982-1990 was $927 billion. In the same period, developing countries remitted $1,345 in debt servicing alone - a difference in favour of the west of $418 billion. To understand the size of that, it's worth noting that the Marshall Plan transferred to Europe the equivalent of $70 billion in today's prices. In other words, developing countries are providing through debt servicing alone the equivalent of more than two Marshal Plans every three years. And that is assuming that all aid sent to developing countries was actually spent there. ActionAid calculates that only one third of G7 official aid in 2003 was 'real' aid. The rest was 'phantom' aid which may have achieved other goals, but did not help to fight poverty. Only 10 cents of every dollar of US aid is 'real' aid. The 'best performer', according to ActionAid, was the UK - but even there, nearly a third of aid was found to be phantom. And substantial proportions of that aid is used to hire private consultancy companies whose task is the privatisation of water supplies.

The G8 meeting should be seen as a gathering of the descendants of the Berlin Conference. Their agenda is fundamentally the same. We shouldn't be begging them to be nice about it. We shouldn't be begging them to carve us up 'fairly'. Let's end this charade about 'fighting poverty': turn, instead, to fighting those who cause and profit from impoverishment.

* Firoze Manji is director of Fahamu and Pambazuka News editor

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