As the IMF discusses a new programme with Mozambique, an important debate with and within the IMF becomes relevant. After the secret debt fiasco, the IMF has the upper hand, but donors and civil society will need to monitor the discussions to ensure that a hard-nosed IMF negotiating team actually follows the new guidelines emerging from Washington.

While the IMF loudly boasts “good governance” and demands the highest standards of discipline from states that it puts into debt with adjustment plans, Christine Lagarde endorses the theft of 403 million Euros of public money and emerges with a clean record, an improved image and remains at the head of one of the most powerful financial institutions in the world.

In 2013 Mozambican government officials formed three private companies and took out illegal secret loans totaling $2 billion. Donors suspended credit to Mozambique because of the loans as the national currency fell by 70% in 2016. Restructuring the illegal loans means imposed austerity on a population already living in extreme austerity and eventually repaying the creditors from revenues derived from Mozambique’s natural gas deposits that on the market in 2023.

An internal IMF report admitting the destructive nature of neoliberalism may have come too late for many African countries. The neoliberal structural adjustment programs have led to economic hardships, political instability and conflicts in most African countries where they have been implemented.