Africa's Continued Subjugation

As a Black person raised in the West, I'm especially sensitive to arguments surrounding Africa and African identity. So when the hype machine started going on about the Live8 concert right before the G8 meeting, I was immediately cynical about the issue of the G8 nations offering any kind of economic breathing space to Africa. Unfortunately it looks like I'm right in assuming that the G8 continues to subjugate poorer nations.

The first thing you should be suspicious about, is that you are getting no real structural analysis of the debt relationships between G8 nations and Africa. Africa is just postered as a collection of poor nations dying of AIDS and various other calamities. The main themes of the latest G8 summit are to get debt cancelled and aid increased. Many aid organisations right now, are saying that the rhetoric given around G8 and Live8 are a sham. The $50 billion offered is an old offer and has a clause that any new debt relief comes off aid offers. In other words all new aid will simply flow back out of Africa in the form of debt service payments. So it balances out to NO NEW MONEY. In other words, G8 leaders pat themselves on the back while continuing to force poor countries to open their markets, privatise public services (health, education, etc to multinationals). In other words, it's just spin to improve public image. Poverty will continue to increase under this programme.

This all sounds pretty cynical unless we look at the actual aid offer. This was VERY hard to find and I could not find any ACTUAL documented agreements between countries ( if someone knows where to find them, I'd be very interested ). There are however, a lot of articles about the G8 and it's altruism. I was only able to come across statements made by some major aid organisations. Obviously this is no real analysis. But many reputable organisations and academics seem to agree with me.
Oxfam 

Detailed statement in response to G8 communique
Action Aid ActionAid's response to the G8
Christian Aid Blair is right: G8 result is ‘disappointment’

There are even plenty of people working within the empire who recount how the US, UK, and other western powers deliberately conspire to destroy a country's means of economic self-sustainment. Here, John Perkins, a former respected member of the international banking community describes how he helped the US cheat third-world countries out of trillions of dollars.
Democracy Now Interview with John Perkins

Posted by Timothy Washington on 2005.07.11| Original post

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