Paul Redfern, East African (Nairobi), February 7, 2009
Africa could soon suffer seriously from the global credit crisis as Western countries start to build up huge amounts of debt in an effort to head off an international recession.
African ministers are concerned that the West will become so focused on domestic problems that they will ignore their development pledges for Africa.
The serious threat to African economies posed by the global financial crisis was an emerging theme at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 27-31.
Politicians and economists stressed that an era of relative optimism about Africa’s economic prospects was coming to a close.
A number of key reasons are now emerging as to why the financial crisis could threaten Africa’s economies, which have felt themselves relatively insulated against the mounting credit problems.
First is the issue of trade and financial protectionism where Western ministers will be under pressure to direct loans towards their own markets at the expense of others.
Second are concerns about the fall in commodity prices.
Agriculture is also suffering from the high price of fertiliser, which is inhibiting investment.
Finally African economies are also suffering from a fall in remittances from their own Diaspora who themselves have been hit by the credit crunch in the West.
Speaking to the opening session in Davos, Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s finance minister, said that Africa’s economies were “at risk of decoupling, derailment and abandonment.”
Mr Manuel also believes that the huge volume of debt being issued by countries like the US and the UK could crowd out other sovereign borrowers.
The South African minister’s concerns are shared by Kofi Annan, the former secretary-general of the United Nations, who told the UK-based Financial Times: “Africa had nothing to do with the sub-prime crisis but we are all going to be affected.”
Mr Annan believes that the loss of remittance income sent by Africans working overseas will be the biggest blow.
“Africa gets billions from the diaspora,” he said.
This concern was echoed by Rachid Mohammed Rachid, Egypt’s trade minister, who told the forum: “Workers in the Gulf and elsewhere are being sent home, so remittances will eventually go down.”
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a managing director of the World Bank, has suggested that 0.7 per cent of the spending stimulus packages adopted by developed nations be directed towards the developing world.
However, he is not optimistic this will happen.
Original article
(Posted on February 10, 2009)
Comments
Oh, horror of horrors! What will the Kenyans who chanted “Obama is Jesus!” in the streets do now?
Watch for the rats to start abandoning the sinking ship. Doctors, government ministers, and anyone with money will suddenly start applying for travel visas to the West, with family.
African ministers are concerned that the West will become so focused on domestic problems that they will ignore their development pledges for Africa.
Have the conditions of any countries south or west of the Sahara desert improved in the decades since colonialism in Africa was abandoned by the European powers?still starving with the population projected to increase !
Finally African economies are also suffering from a fall in remittances from their own Diaspora who themselves have been hit by the credit crunch in the West.
Y’know, all those in the “Diaspora” could be helping to develop their “mother countries”.
This concern was echoed by Rachid Mohammed Rachid, Egypt’s trade minister, who told the forum: “Workers in the Gulf and elsewhere are being sent home, so remittances will eventually go down.”
If only such policies were used in Europe!
“The West’s economic woes may lead it to forget its “development pledges” to Africa.”
That’s not all that will be ignored. The multicults are going to be hard pressed to bring in new crime and poverty entrants into Western nations, but the worse of it all for them will be a resurgence of hard core right wing groups that will be hell-bent on reversing the multicultural utopia created by the evil manipulators who are guilty of the crimes against our nations, and I suspect they will be stronger than ever before.
Forget about your new world order, boys. There’s one in the process of emerging right now, but it’s going to be your worst nightmare.
Excellent news. Perhaps this will force African nations to work at developing themselves, rather than whining for forced handouts from the hapless taxpayers of the West.
Not to worry - the Chinese are slowly colonizing the African continent.
They are our responsibility to begin with. And what good does the money ever do them? The spoils always go to their black dictators while the poverty, disease, and violence continue on unebated. Furthermore, seeing how they treat whites in Africa these days, I wonder why white westerners feel any obligation to help them any longer.
Speaking to the opening session in Davos, Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s finance minister, said that Africa’s economies were “at risk of decoupling, derailment and abandonment.”
Strange that South Africa never needed handouts from anyone while it had a white government. There was never any excessive unemployment, there was never any starvation, Malaria had been erradicated, cholera was unheard of, the best free health system on the continent was to be found in that hateful place.
The “new ” government has smashed all that in a short 15 years.
Indeed, Cry The Beloved Country”
You would think that if sub-Saharan African countries
How many more years is it going to take for African nations to develop? The answer is that it will NEVER happen.
Amazing! It’s not enough that Western(ie. White - or largely White, White Founded, etc.)nations must support the “Africans” in their own midst, but must also support nearly an entire contient of them abroad!! Outrageous, just outrageous…
Why does’nt Oprah or Jay-Z or Denzell donate to Africa? Oh that’s right, let whitey do it.
Obscuratus! In 2007, I met an enthiopian man in a deli in Fairfield County, CT. He worked for some financial firm in Greenwich and was educated in this country. At a point he started to tell me about how rich his country was, and I stopped him and asked him about all the news coverage of starving ethiopians and how the country was so impoverished,..he said that it was a big country and that was going on in another part of the country. So why is this country always sending food aid there? If they are so rich, they can take care of their own people?
“African ministers are concerned that the West will become so focused on domestic problems that they will ignore their development pledges for Africa.”
I hope it happens soon because it has been happening at the expense of others…it’s time for Africans to take responsibility for their own development instead of leeching of the rest world with the piti non-sense.
Watch for the rats to start abandoning the sinking ship. Doctors, government ministers, and anyone with money will suddenly start applying for travel visas to the West, with family.
That is exactly what will happen, and because it is closer by, many will pour into Europe, both legally and illegally. Most will seek asylum, since it means housing and benefits. Others will head for American, Canada, and Australia. With the economy the way it is, they should be turned away, but I doubt it will happen.
Michael C. Scott at 7:50 PM
With respect, if you really believe that Africans will ever stop whining for handouts and take responsibility for their own development, you know nothing about Africans. Not going to happen.
African countries are euphemistically called “developing countries”, but the fact is that no African country is developing. They are all regressing to the stone age. And that’s with handouts.
A few years ago South Africa staged something called the “Cradle of Language Conference”. The theme was a theory that language first developed in Africa. The Minister of Education was seen on TV explaining the significance of the event. Basically, “We gave the world language. The world owes us. They should give us money”. That’s our intellectual elite, people.
Between AIDS and famine, how is it that the population of Africa continues to increase? Something is not adding up.
Africans follow a R-type Reproductive Strategy.
Chances are thought that this stuff will not come to pass as China is attempting to acquire Africas natural resources and will put the blacks back to work (again as slaves…)
I think it is very possible that Obama was put into place (by shadowing forces) so as a black he could counter China in Africa by calling on ‘da brothas’
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Managing Director of the World Bank is a woman - not a man.
Posted by Anonymous at 5:03 AM on February 11
Well the good Christians of the world council of churches is doing in-vitro fertilization on a production line for $200 a cycle.
Plus AIDS apparently does not kill as fast as we have been led to believe…
“Between AIDS and famine, how is it that the population of Africa continues to increase? Something is not adding up.”
I don’t think AIDS is evenly dispersed throughout Africa, it’s more concentrated in the cities and urban areas; so not all places are heavily affected. Also, they get enough foreign aid and medicine so that enough people can survive childhood and are able to procreate. Their females typically have many children.
Have the conditions of any countries south or west of the Sahara desert improved in the decades since colonialism in Africa was abandoned by the European powers?
It seems that NO MATTER WHAT happens, it is always another disaster for Africa. Another cause for demanding more aid.
African countries are euphemistically called “developing countries”, but the fact is….they are all regressing.
Forget Africa?? Never!! Madonna and Angelina will pick up the slack,even if it means giving their last dollar! Uhm…right??
Why dont 100% of black africans have AIDS at this point, given the prevalence of AIDS in their home countries and the tendency to promiscuity?
Will it ever reach 100%? What factors are hindering it from reaching that level?
Are 30% of their populations so sexually conservative that they really arent promiscuous? I find that somewhat hard to believe.
Has anyone beside me noticed that in the UNICEF add begging for money and showing the black kid with flies all over it, is the same picture they were using in the 70s?? and why does the little kid in the background NOT have flies all over it’s mouth and eyes?? just wondering.
I, for one, am not against China taking over Africa under the guise of providing benevolent aid. (As we read about on this and other sites.) Let the Chinese build roads, schools and hospitals. Then subject the locals to a modern form of slavery… paying them pennies per hour, for providing brute labor, as needed by their new masters. Twenty or thirty years down the road, China will be ruling ALL those vaunted Black nations. Even if China has to stir up little conflicts and wars, using Black surrogate armies to do it.
NPR Radio had a seris on Africa not that long ago. The interviewee was an agricultural expert who related his experience trying to convice the natives to give up their traditionally wasteful, inefficient farming methods. So their fields would be more productive despite the droughts and other perennial problems encountered.
The simple fools in effect told him “it was good enough for our fathers and grandfathers, and their grandfathers. So we will farm the same as they did.” That, friends, is the MENTALITY that keeps Africa prostrate and helpless. They cannot, will not change their farming habits to fit changing conditions. Remember that, before you are induced to open your wallet when subjected to these endless tearjerker stories and pictures by this or that do-gooder organization.
With regards to disease and transmittal of diseases, including STDs… the same unwillingness to learn or change. Send sanitation experts to a village; within months, it’s back to the same, filthy habits and practices.
African “leaders” have been told often enough they need to urge birth control rather than indiscriminate breeding. To limit their populations to a size their country can support. Which logic, predictably, was totally ignored. Yet these foolish people keep waving their beggar bowls at the White nations. “You have to help us. You OWE us your help.” To which my personal conviction being “like hell I owe you.”
I urge all thinking people to refuse to help “poor Africa.” Simply because being unwilling to make an effort to help themselves, they do not, emphatically not deserve any further help!
It is nearly 25 years since Ethiopia’s (and Bob Geldof’s) famous Feed The World campaign, and in that time Ethiopia’s population has grown from 33.5 million to 78 million today.
Says it all really, from the very popular article….‘Africa is giving nothing to anyone — apart from AIDS’ http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/africa-is-giving-nothing-to-anyone—apart-from-aids-1430428.html
“The simple fools in effect told him “it was good enough for our fathers and grandfathers, and their grandfathers. So we will farm the same as they did.” That, friends, is the MENTALITY that keeps Africa prostrate and helpless. They cannot, will not change their farming habits to fit changing conditions. ” — FedUP
Regarding Ethiopia’s astounding increase from 33 million to 78 million.. it must be noted that this wasin spite of
Ethiopia is living proof of Malthus’ theory “writ large” as they say. Indeed, all of Africa is.
“Ethiopia is living proof of Malthus’ theory “writ large” as they say. Indeed, all of Africa is. “
Unthinking people will increase in numbers until they reach the limits of their territory and food supply. Then, Nature will take over and will ruthlessly weed them out by starvation, war, and disease.
Thinking people will voluntarily curb their own numbers, but that will just leave more space and food for the improvident ones to increase even faster.
What is the answer?
Please bear in mind when Malthus wrote his theories there was no such thing as “foreign aid”.
…nor was there any such thing a kool-aid…
Please bear in mind when Malthus wrote his theories there was no such thing as “foreign aid”.
