This week’s hush-hush visit by International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde to Pretoria (between stops in Ghana and Angola) is mysterious. In contrast to last week’s IMF press briefing claim – “Madame Lagarde will hold meetings with the authorities, as well as fairly extensive meetings with the private sector, civil society, academia, women leaders, and of course the media” – there is a complete information void here, with no public events scheduled.

As the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) hold their Spring meetings in Washington, DC, billions of dollars due to African nations are illicitly leaving the continent.

Donald Trump is by far the most controversial president the US has ever offered the world. But behind the headline churning, attention grabbing façade, is there any difference between him and the 44 US presidents that have come before?

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.

Opposition candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo has been sworn in as Ghana's new president. Beyond the current euphoria sweeping through much of the nation, the winning party is stuck with Ghana’s IMF programme at least for the next two years.  It remains to be seen how they will rise above the country’s worrying high debt ratio, currently around 70 per cent of GDP, to achieve their ambitious campaign promises.

Prime Holdings, a corrupt company discredited a decade ago, is inexplicably back in business handling huge government contracts. Meanwhile, Crystal Ventures, a company owned by President Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front, dominates the commercial scene. 

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.