William Boot
The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF)top three officials and the vice-president of the World Bank flew to Gabon last week to introduce 20 African leaders to a new initiative to make it easier for countries to escape the bonds of debt and grow their way out of want.
Arriving in private jets at Libreville’s bare-bones airport, the honchos of the continent headed downtown in armed motorcades. Horns blaring and lights flashing, a phalanx of Toyota Landcruisers – machine-gun-toting bodyguards leaning out of the windows – bore Laurent Kabila, president of the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, through the tight streets of Libreville towards the swank Meridien hotel, a tasteless mix of twinkling Italian chandeliers, gold-and-marble staircases and pastel chintz furniture.
In the lobby, leaders and their minions circulated, the sharp-suited trying to look authentic against the safari jackets and Mao shirts of the militarily inclined. Meanwhile, crumpled Washington economists, failing to make headway on the poverty issue with anyone in the lobby, wiped the perspiration from their pink brows and made for the peace and quiet of the dining room.
The routine was little different once the two-day heads-of-state summit got under way the next day, two-and-a-half hours late. The presidential convoys, Mercedeses now in tow, screamed across town to the “Cit de la Democratie” – a development commissioned by Gabon’s President El Hadj Omar Bongo for the few conferences the country has ever held.
He was accompanied to the podium by a marching band and a small army of praise singers, whereupon he declared the meeting open. “It’s now up to us to formulate adequate strategies capable of giving hope and confidence to the people of Africa,” he announced soberly.
The main goal, all seemed to agree, would be to reduce by half the number of those living on less than $1 a day – 300-million people in sub-Sahara alone – by 2015.
After speeches from IMF managing director Michel Camdessus, World Bank vice-president Jean-Louis Sarbib and head of the African Development Bank Omar Kabbaj, everyone retired for lunch back at the Meridien.
The afternoon session was supposed to include a discussion on the “priorities for the economic development of sub-Saharan Africa at the dawn of the third millennium”, but most didn’t make it back from the comforts of the hotel.
In the Libreville Declaration which emerged from the summit, heads of state “endorsed” the IMF’s new lending tool, “affirmed” their determination to fight corruption and “agreed” that poverty needed to be reduced and growth promoted.
That done, they slipped into their attendant Mercedeses and air-conditioned 4x4s and dashed for the airport. The IMF big thinkers, still wiping the sweat from their foreheads, squeezed into a red Mazda and moved away.