David Shapshak
Debt relief topped the agenda at the Second Tokyo International Conference on African Development between October 19 and 21, when Japan announced a grant bail-out for some African countries.
This was perhaps the most significant and concrete achievement of the conference, which adopted an ambitious “agenda for action” to halve the present levels of poverty on the continent and achieve significant gains in health and education by 2015.
Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi told 1 000 representatives from 80 African, Asian, European and North American countries that “Japan is well aware that many African countries are burdened with debt problems. Japan has extended up to now approximately 30- billion yen [R1,5-billion] to African countries in debt relief grant aid. Because we consider it an urgent issue, we are giving serious consideration to expanding the number of eligible countries and expanding the designated debt.”
Obuchi’s commitment of grant-in-aid translates to a $20-million to $30- million cancellation of sub-Saharan Africa’s annual arrears of $100- million to Japan. The region owes Japan $5-billion, of which $100- million falls due each year, Japanese foreign affairs officials told the Mail & Guardian. Obuchi also pledged support in teaching Africa to manage its debt better.
“Africa is paying international creditors four times what it’s paying for basic health and education,” said James Speth, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, which co-organised the conference with the Japanese government and the Global Coalition for Africa. Japan’s move represents a shift from the Birmingham Group of Eight industrialised nations summit in May, when Japan joined Germany and the United States in blocking substantial progress on debt relief.
Obuchi’s announcement was welcomed by Deputy President Thabo Mbeki. He said it was an admission that there was something “illogical about pumping resources into a country only for it to be wasted on servicing debt”.
Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings used the conference’s global platform to attack double-edged aid. “Most of what is termed aid is actually in the form of loans and where these come from bilateral sources, they are short-term and high-cost with the result that we hardly have the opportunity to derive any benefits from these facilities before we start repayment,” he said, adding that bilateral loans were tied to purchases from donor countries making goods and services more expensive.
Poverty reduction was a key goal for resuscitating Africa, the conference concluded. Speth stressed that Africa needed to reduce its poverty, but could only do that through solving its debt problem. But, he warned, the Tokyo agenda will be just another “brave declaration about Africa unless we act on it”.