SUE PLEMING, Washington | Wednesday 10.30am.
PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki has made an impassioned plea to rich countries such as the United States to help poorer nations like South Africa that are struggling in an “ocean of entrenched poverty.”
Delivering an inaugural address at Georgetown University in the United States, Mbeki referred to comments by US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, and said the United States could not stay “an oasis of prosperity” if the rest of the world is in financial chaos.
“I know of no other period in human history where one country had as much direct and indirect global influence as the United States does today, reaching even into the most remote villages on our own continent,” he said.
Mbeki said the scale and extent of poverty in Africa is so enormous that in 1999 the Commonwealth Heads of Government called global poverty a structural fault in the world economy.
Citing statistics from the United Nations Development Programme, Mbeki said that in 1999 more than 80 countries had lower per capita incomes than a decade ago.
In addition, he said the richest fifth of the world’s people accounted for 86% of world Gross Domestic Product while the bottom fifth shared just one percent.
The top three billionaires had assets totalling more than the combined GDP of all the least developed countries and their 600-million people.
Mbeki said the United States is enjoying unprecedented levels of economic growth and prosperity and it will be easy for many people to adopt the slogan “I’m all right Jack!”
Investor interest in emerging economies has abated and in Africa the added problem of wars, military coups and instability had further dampened investor appetites, Mbeki said.
During talks with President Bill Clinton on Monday, Mbeki called for “urgent and extraordinary steps” to fight poverty, war and diseases, including Aids.
He said he has urged Clinton to become actively involved in Africa and that the two will soon examine practical steps to make this a reality.
“The enormity of the problem of poverty of which we are speaking is difficult to convey in words, especially to those who have had the good fortune not to experience its pain or in other ways to touch, feel and smell it,” Mbeki said.