Africa and G8 Colonial mentality continues

The great poet Rabindranath Thakur, in his famous poem "Africa", while expressing his anguish and anger at the brutal domination and exploitation of Africa by colonial powers, confidently predicted that the days of colonial rule in that continent were destined to end soon. It was his strong anti-colonial feeling and robust optimism that led to such a conviction. The belief expressed by Rabindranath and all others who opposed imperialism has materialised to the extent that the continent of Africa is now free from any direct colonial rule. But the imperialists are still pulling strings from behind in many states with the help of leftism or radicalism, are actually perpetuating the colonial exploitation through backdoors. It is chiefly because of backdoor machinations and manipulations by imperialist powers that most of the states in the continent of Africa are in turmoil. Ethnic or internecine violence or military coups are very common in todays Africa resulting in deaths and destructions. Democracy as a state-system or as a social creed has failed so far to strike roots deeply on African soil. Abject poverty and hardships are rampant throughout the continent except a few states. For nearly two centuries the colonialists looted the natural resources and exploited the human resources. Even while leaving the continent these exploiters took away with them whatever they could lay their hands on. Every year more than 4 millions of African children are extremely ill-nourished and roughly one in eight children are seriously ill or disabled.

The following table shows the actual state of affairs in some of the African states. This is the general picture almost all the continent over.

The group of developed nations called G-8 is of the opinion that corruption and wrong economic policies were responsible for the heavy debt burden of the poor countries. The group, therefore, fell that writing off debts alone will not help overcoming the acute crises. Recently in June, 1999 the G-8 countries met at cologne in Germany. The meeting had to face a huge demonstration by at least 35000 peoples from all over the world. They formed a long human chain in demand of writing off 220 billion dollars of international debt of poor countries. The G-8 countries agreed to the extent that they will reduce by 27 billion dollars the debt of 71 billion dollars that the poorest countries owe after deducting the existing debt relief scheme money. But it must be noted that Western debt relief schemes have always been tied up with economic restructuring programmes which would ultimately open the doors of those economics for the Western transnationals. This year too, the reduction of debt burden offered by the G-8 carries the condition that the recipient countries will have to follow the IMF-World Bank economic policy prescriptions and poverty alleviation schemes. But those who are abreast of things know well that these two monetary institutions are actually instruments in the hands of the imperialist hegemonists. The experience of all the countries who opted, willingly or being gooded to, in favour of Fund-Bank proposed reforms and structural reconstructions, are now reeling in deep economic crisis chiefly because of the speculative character of the foreign investments. Besides, very few countries would benefit, according to experts, from the initiative of the G-8 and there were many others that would not. A large number of countries of Africa such as Angola would not quality for debt relief even by the year 200 A.D.