DRC: The Democratic Republic of Congo and Debt

In 2003 the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced $10 billion in "debt relief" for the Democratic Republic of Congo. According to their calculations, this would reduce the country's foreign debt by approximately 80 percent. The offer came, however, with a full set of complicated conditions and deadlines. Even if all of the conditions are met, full relief would not be delivered until sometime in 2006. After that, Congo would still owe over $2 billion to foreign creditors. The largest creditors are the Bank and Fund themselves, plus the U.S., France, and Belgium. Yet the Congo, of all countries, has one of the strongest cases for full cancellation of debt and indeed for reparations from the lenders, writes William Minter, a Foreign Policy in Focus analyst and the editor of the AfricaFocus Bulletin, in this Foreign Policy in Focus commentary.