After the concerts, Africa still suffers

Despite the high-profile push for African aid that dominated July’s Live 8 rock concerts and the Group of Eight summit of wealthy nations in Scotland, the world’s poorest continent remains mired in debt.

The question — said Salih Booker, executive director of Africa Action, a Washington-based advocacy group — is: “Who owes whom?”

Mr. Booker is at one end of a sharp debate over how to deal with a massive debt load that cripples Africa’s ability to liberate itself from extreme poverty, illiteracy and the scourge of HIV/AIDS.

“Our repeated calls to cancel Africa’s debt fell on deaf ears, although we are asking for justice, not charity,” Mr. Booker said.

The issue got rare high-level attention at the G-8 summit, when leaders of key industrial nations promised to write off $40 billion amid a global set of rock concerts seeking to eliminate Africa’s debt entirely.

But the Bush administration warned that the plan to cancel $40 billion of debt owed by poor countries could come unglued if attempts are made to significantly change it.

The debate is likely to figure prominently at the annual meetings Sept. 24 and 25 of the 184-nation World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The G-8 agreement would initially cancel debt repayments that 18 poor countries owe to the two international lenders. At the end of last year, the world’s poorest countries owed a combined $144 billion to multilateral lenders, such as the World Bank and IMF, to other countries and to private banks.

Corruption festers

Governance is the problem, not debt, said Roger Bate, a resident fellow with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

He pointed to the period between 1989 and 2002, when 38 of the world’s poorest nations, most in Africa, received $40 billion in debt forgiveness. In the same period, the same countries took on $93 billion in new debt.

Nor will an increase in foreign aid from wealthy nations do much to ease African poverty, he argued.

“For example, Angola has a wealth of oil and a corrupt regime, and most of its foreign aid is being stolen,” Mr. Bate said.

William Easterly, a development economist who spent years at the World Bank, has tallied nearly $600 billion — adjusted for inflation — dispensed in foreign aid to Africa between 1960 and 2003.

Still, Africa’s per-capita income has declined 13 percent since the 1980s, and the number of Africans living in “extreme poverty,” which is defined as having less than $1 per day, has doubled, Mr. Easterly said.

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