By Africa W,
THE World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were set up during the end of the World War II to rebuild the economies of Europe. However, in order for the world bank and the IMF to implement their policies, they began offering loans to poor countries but only if the poor countries privatized their economies and allowed western corporations an almost free access to their raw materials and markets. That was a poverty trap and many poor countries realized it when it was too late. We were already in chains.
That was the beginning of much of the problems we face today in Africa. Now we are in a vicious cycle of poverty and there seems to be no way out.
The western corporations flourish while the poor continue to die in poverty. In other words, the poor in Africa continue to feed the greedy rich corporations in the western world. The poor get poorer while the rich get richer. People continue to die from extreme poverty and hunger in Africa and other parts of the world but not so many people know the World Bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organization (WTO) are behind almost all these. It is a new form of war whereby the rich western corporations use hunger and deaths as weapons of mass destruction.
In other words, the World Bank, IMF, and WTO are the triple enemies of progress in almost every developing country in the world. Now let’s see how the World Bank, IMF and WTO operate in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Take a country like Ghana for example. Ghana is blessed with abundance of natural resources. The World Bank and the IMF are very keen in countries such as Ghana where they can easily control the natural resources and the markets.
There used to be some prosperous rice farming communities in the northern parts of Ghana and the government of Ghana used to give those rice producing farmers some farming subsidies to enable them produce rice on a large scale to help feed the nation. However, the world bank and the IMF stood in and told the Ghanaian government they would not approve any more loans for Ghana unless the government cut the farming subsidies it was providing to the poor rice farmers.
The main reason behind it was that Ghana had to import rice from western countries such as the United States (a major partner of the world bank and the IMF). Now Ghana imports most of its rice from abroad at huge prices every year. So at the end of the day, Ghana owes the World Bank and the IMF huge amounts of money but the money did not remain in the Ghanaian economy because Ghana had to use the loan to import food from abroad.
Meanwhile, the rice producing communities in Ghana could have helped produce enough rice to feed the nation and even export some abroad to make more profit. Now the northern communities in Ghana remain the poorest in the country with no better jobs and no opportunities at all in most parts. Young boys and girls some as young as nine are migrating to the southern parts of the country to major cities such as Kumasi and Accra (a very dangerous journey for kids) all in search for jobs so they can take care of their poor dying families back home. Most of these kids never return home. Some die along the way and some return worse than before and all thanks to the IMF and the World Bank.
Although the money was returned to them, we still owe them. That is why most developing countries owe the World Bank and the IMF a lot in loans. Sometimes you hear “debt cancellations” and you may think they forgive debts of poor countries but that is not how it works in reality.
The World Bank and the IMF never forgive and because of the huge debts developing countries owe these international financial institutions, they (including the United States as a major partner of these institutions) control almost all the affairs of those poor countries. In other words, if you don’t obey what the World Bank and the IMF say then you must pay back the debt and because you cannot pay back the debt, you must obey whatever instruction they forwarded into your face. Any country of leader who resisted or disobeyed these financial institutions will be considered as a “Dictator” or a “Terrorist” and must be eliminated in most cases.
For example, when there is an oil discovery in a certain developing country (that owes the World Bank) and the leader of that country is not ready to cooperate (for an easy manipulation and take over by western corporations), it will be decided that that government or country need to quickly get rid of, most of the time through rebellion or war. A case in point is Iraq, Libya, Sudan, etc.
