Changing guard at the IMF

When a young Guinean maid allegedly fought off the advances of a naked man in an upscale New York apartment, it is highly unlikely that she knew that her bravery would set off one of the most interesting power struggles in the international system. Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s (DSK) resignation from the IMF (International Monetary Fund) on 19 May inadvertently opened the door for a seismic shift in the organisation of the international financial system, with many analysts seeing it as a chance to end the white, European, male domination of the organisation. Yet with Christine Lagarde so far being the only candidate to offer herself up for the post, countries of the global South led by the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations are suggesting that it is more important to address the ‘European’ part of that description than the ‘male’. African countries, with the exception of South Africa, have been interestingly silent on the issue of the IMF succession, although it is likely that they will go with South Africa.

The IMF succession comes at an interesting time for Africa. In the last three years, questions of sovereignty and independence have come under even greater scrutiny than that to which they were subjected earlier, in part due to the actions of the International Criminal Court. Warrants of arrest against Omar al-Bashir and members of his government prompted a flurry of protest within the African Union (AU) in defence of Bashir, even as evidence of serious crimes committed against the people of Darfur was in plain sight. It didn’t help that in the wake of the post-election violence in Kenya the prosecutor successfully sought out warrants of arrest against key government officials in Kenya, sparking of another wave of protest and complaint. The Kenyan government has looked to pass acts of parliament to annul the ratification of the Rome Statute, while other AU nations have promised to look into implementing similar legislation.

I bring up the ICC because I think it throws up an interesting contrast to the IMF. On the one hand you have an institution that was wholeheartedly supported by Africans through its development and implementation that ostensibly exists to protect ordinary Africans from the excesses of their own governments. As a region, Africa represents the highest number of states that have ratified the Rome Statute, the deputy prosecutor is an African woman, and many Africans work within the institution (full disclosure: I was once one of them). In the shadow of the Rwandan and Burundian genocides, not to mention the crisis in the Balkans, the ICC was set up as a permanent institution to address some of the legal obstacles to holding people in power accountable for violence against civilians. To be sure, it is an institution with its fair share of problems, but if African governments had concerns, they had ample time in Rome to air them, and one imagines that the final statute represents the consensus of representatives in the room on the day on what breaches of institutional law are so grave as to merit international attention.

On the other hand, you have an institution that was founded after a European war, explicitly to help European nations rebuild, and which only through mission creep rather than internal reform began implementing policy in the global South. The IMF throughout its existence has quite literally taken food off the plates of poor people, through austerity programmes that crippled agricultural infrastructure in the name of structural adjustment programmes (SAP). Beyond agriculture, SAP programmes have been blamed in part for the sad state of African universities, for crippling public healthcare by forcing governments to cut spending and for unabashedly challenging state sovereignty through conditionalities that favoured neoliberal, privatised economies.

Yet while African leaders are falling over themselves to urge each other to withdraw from the ICC, no one seems to be raising the same issues about the IMF. Instead of taking this opportunity to once and for all condemn the infamous power inequalities in the organisation, nations of the global South are pushing to have one of their own head up the organisation. Note that changing the leadership is no guarantee for changed outcomes – unless the incoming leader can revolutionise the way in which the IMF conceives of problems and their solutions, while challenging the manner in which neoliberal economics is taught across the West, chances are we’re looking at more of the same. At the same time, while it’s true that the cases and situations before the ICC seem to be disproportionately African, shouldn’t more of us should be questioning why instances of governments committing atrocities against their own people are disproportional in African states, instead of pushing for withdrawal that will ultimately give protection to Bashir et al?

Similarly, it is worth recalling that one of the key strategies employed by Asian nations to gain protect their economic autonomy and ensure recovery after the Asian economic crisis in 1997 was to threaten the formation of the Asian Monetary Fund. Asian countries proved that the IMF’s greatest vulnerability is in finding itself no longer needed by those it imposes itself upon. Instead of falling into misguided allegiances with BRIC nations that have yet to prove that they would handle African interests any differently, perhaps we should be considering making our own stand in this time of change. DSK’s arrest has revealed once and for all that European nations would not hesitate to stomp over the global South to protect their interests. In the spirit of our Guinean sister, isn’t it about time that African nations stood up to the IMF and demanded respect from our neighbours to the north?

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