Imperialism and the ruin of Africa

Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!No 113 June/July 1993

Imperialism is destroying Africa. It is destroying its land, its people, its future. That is the only conclusion that can be drawn from Oxfam’s report Africa: Make or break – Action for Recovery. The report is a stunning indictment of imperialist parasitism; although it ends with an appeal to the governments of the self-same imperialist nations to now reverse their ways, the value of this kind of report should not be underestimated.

The facts need to be spelled out. Average incomes in Africa have fallen by a quarter since the mid-1970s. This fall of course coincides with the onset of the imperialist crisis. The number living below the poverty line rose from 184 million in 1985 to 216 million in 1990 and will rise to over 300 million in 2000. Africa joined the other most oppressed regions of the world in experiencing a continual fall in per capita income throughout the 1980s, a process which has continued into the 1990s:

Growth of real per capita income in imperialist and oppressed regions 1990-1991
(Average annual percent change)

The impact on health is staggering. Infant mortality rates are 50 times higher than in the imperialist nations. In 1990, an estimated 4.2 million children under the age of five dies from malnutrition. Another 30 million are underweight. 20% of the population are anaemic. African women are 50 times more likely to die during childbirth than women in the imperialist nations. In 1990, two-thirds of African governments were spending less on health per capita than they were in 1980.

It is not merely health that has suffered: so has education. Primary school enrolment fell from an average of 78% in the 1970s to 68% in the 1980s. Less than a third of all children attend secondary school.

Underlying this has been the remorseless rise in Africa’s external debt to imperialism:

Debt in sub-Saharan Africa (US$bn)

Agents such as the World Bank and the IMF-imposed so-called Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) on African countries to force them to pay back their debts to the imperialist banks. These SAPs involved cutting welfare expenditure, privatisation, and increasing exports to cover debt servicing. These exports were overwhelmingly primary commodities – copper, coffee, cocoa or cotton. But the prices of these commodities plummeted during the 1980s, whilst that of imports continued to rise. As the Report says (p7): ‘This caused a sharp deterioration in Africa’s terms of trade, the purchasing power of the region’s exports have fallen by some 50% since the early 1980s…Overall the slump in commodity prices cost Africa $50bn in lost earnings between 1986 and 1990 – more than twice the amount the region receives in aid.’

Despite an increase in the volume of exports, their value fell throughout the 1980s, so that for instance cocoa exporters in West Africa increased their output by a quarter between 1986 and 1989, only to see its value fall by a third. The collapse of the International Coffee Agreement in 1989 meant that cocoa prices continued to fall, costing Africa a further $3.2bn between 1989 and 1992. Any future GATT accord on tropical products will intensify this downward pressure.

With the decline in export earnings (from $65bn per annum 1981-85 to $55bn per annum 1986-90), the overall debt burden increased. Despite paying out $71.5bn between 1986 and 1992, overall indebtedness rose from $116bn to $183bn. Of this, $l1bn is arrears, up from $220m 10 years ago. So-called ‘cancellation’ and rescheduling such as that adopted by the Toronto Agreement have saved little more than $10bn. Meanwhile, the IMF alone drained $3bn between 1983 and 1990: like· the World Bank, it will not reschedule nor cancel debt.

Imperialism has sucked Africa dry. The rate of return on foreign investment fell from around 30 percent in the late 1960s to 2.5 percent in the 1980s. The result: total private direct investment in 1990 was a mere $1.1bn, and is now little more than 0.6 percent of total worldwide foreign direct investment. Even this sum was offset by repayments of $1bn to commercial banks.

The latest twist is that as Africa becomes less and less self-sufficient in food, it has become a dumping ground for heavily subsidised EC and US agricultural exports. Thus in Burkina Faso, EC grain is sold for $60 a ton, about a third lower than locally produced equivalents: this low price is guaranteed by a Common Agricultural Policy subsidy of $100 per ton. Likewise, the EC exported 54,000 tons of subsidised maize to Zimbabwe, which then had to sell its own stockpile under World Bank advice at a huge loss, leaving it without any strategic food supplies when it was hit by the 1992 drought. Whilst the EC and the US spend over $20bn annually on subsidising agricultural over-production and export subsidies, the net effect on Africa is to undermine local agriculture, increase unemployment and increase dependence on food imports.

Meanwhile, the environment becomes ever more degraded, mainly because of the increasing use of cash crops as a means of generating export income. Fragile grasslands and forests have been turned over to the growth of timber and cocoa, forcing nomadic herders onto poorer grasslands which have suffered intensified erosion. The result is increasing desertification, further reducing any chance of agricultural self-sufficiency.

War and famine have been increasingly the lot of millions of African people since Reagan and Thatcher sought to roll back the tide of national liberation struggles. Mozambique and Angola, Ethiopia and Somalia, the lives of millions have been part of the price that imperialism has exacted through its local stooges. The Financial Times, in a disgraceful editorial review of the Oxfam report (29 April 1993), sought to pin the blame for the deepening crisis on the continent on indigenous governments – their corruption, or their ‘excessive’ arms expenditure, or their ‘socialism’ (Nyerere’s Tanzania receiving special mention). But the corruption is a necessary part of neo-colonialism: it is the basis on which the comprador bourgeoisie can arise, prepared to sell the rights of their people to imperialism, provided they receive their cut.

Oxfam has been continually attacked for its exposure of the effects of imperialism, earning the particular hatred of the Tory government, and an attempt to place its political work outside charitable status. As communists, we disagree with the hopes it has that Western governments may be persuaded to adopt a Marshall Plan to regenerate Africa. But as communists, we recognise that the information it gathers on the impact of imperialism, the humanism it shows towards imperialism’s victims, puts it head and shoulders above the bulk of the British left.

Robert Clough

Africa: Make or Break – Action for Recovery Oxfam UK and Ireland, May 1993, £3.95. Available from Oxfam House, 274 Banbury Road, Oxford OX27DZ.