World

Excellent African Adventure: 2). In an interview withPresident Museveni of Uganda, Stephen Fry commentsthat ‘aid is supposed to be about helping others, thiscountry in a sense is helping us, they’re sending usmoney’:Stephen Fry: Your excellency, the debt that cripples allAfrican countries or many Third World countries, theparticular benefit that you’ve described to me that couldbe accrued to Uganda, that if the debt were lifted, moremoney could be spent on social services, I was wonderingif you could specify which social services and what theneeds are.President Museveni: Like for instance, education. Byabolishing primary school charges, fees as they are called,we are able to push enrolment in the primary school from2.9 million children to just 5.7 million justovernight…you can be able to transform the whole societyfrom a pre-literate society to a completely literate society.Now on the side of health by doing just three things youeliminate 90% of the sicknesses: if you ensureimmunization, you ensure hygiene and you ensurenutrition, 90% of the sicknesses are eliminated, they areall preventable. They are mainly diseases of ignorance.We are donating money to the West. This is adonation because money was borrowed by theseconfused people like Amin, it was never used, now we’vegot to pay for it, it’s a donation, you could call it adonation, we are the donors.Stephen Fry: A strong leader, an enlightened leader, itdoesn’t matter what kind of political leader you have ifthey themselves have no power really to relieve this kindof poverty. I’m standing in here, this is where we see debtbuild up. £1 a year is spent on them, a lot more money isspent on debt by the Ugandan government which shouldbe going here. This is where you see why debt reallymatters. Aid is supposed to be about helping others,this country in a sense is helping us, they’re sendingus money. I really think it’s time we stopped it, I thinkit’s time that we said that this is a nonsense, because debtdoes far more than anything else to keep this country andother countries on its knees. What it wants to do is standand that is my message from Africa. (Comic Relief’sGreat Big Excellent Africa Adventure: 2) [Researchers’enboldening]This is a very powerful message, but it is not alwaysmade in accounts of Africa. A problem with the‘shorthand’ versions of events is that they can fall quicklyinto stereotypes. For example, Africa may be depictedhomogeneously as a single region, susceptible to politicalforces of dictatorship and corrupt regimes that aredepicted as being endemic. Explanations such as theseoversimplify the issue, by putting the blame on Africandictators. They gloss over the role of the west as anaccomplice in Africa’s decline. It was actually a Britishinstigated coup that put Idi Amin in power in Zaire andthe USA propped up Mobutu’s regime, even when itbecame apparent that he was appropriating money forhis own personal use. The strategic interests of the westplayed a key role in the interventions of westerngovernments in African affairs:Africa was an arena of the Cold War: the US and theSoviet Union propped up regimes favourable to them,and the US backed terrorist movements. So, for example,the strategic importance of the Horn of Africa saw theSoviet Union backing Somalia while the United Nationsstood behind Ethiopia in the 60s. In the 1970s, followingthe Ethiopian revolution, Moscow changed sides andbacked Ethiopia in the war against Somalia, which thenbecame an important American strategic asset. Moreover,the impact of the cold war spilled over into neighbouringstates. Zaire was used by the Americans as a base foroperations in Angola, which meant billions of dollarswere squandered propping up the Mobutu regime.The proxy cold war struggle of the 1970s coincided withthe onset of a severe economic downturn in the west.Recession brought collapsing commodity prices andeconomic retrenchment...It takes two to party, and thosewestern lenders who extended lines of credit when it wasobvious that the poor nations were in no state ever torepay were complicit in the build-up of unpayable debts.(The Guardian, 12.6.99)The ‘massive lending and borrowing spree’ referred toby Debt Wish Live began in the 1970s when Arab cartelspushed up oil prices and deposited their huge profits inwestern banks. The west loaned the money to developingcountries to create new markets. As the Independent onSunday put it:Arms dealers engaged in what they call ‘missionaryactivity’ to entice virgin Third World purchasers to spendtheir new-found wealth. Corrupt African elites stolemoney and stashed it in their private accounts, often inthe same banks who were doing the lending.What did the money go on? In the early years much wentto pay the higher prices for their oil imports. Around aquarter went on military spending. About 20% wasstolen by kleptocrat leaders like Mobutu and Marcos. Butthe vast bulk of the ever-growing debt is merelyaccumulated interest: as the years passed, and interestrates soared, poor countries became unable to cover the90 DFID – July 2000