No one really has been able to accurately access the financial contributions which the many nations of Africa have made to the world economy over the past 400 years. When you add up the gold, diamonds, oil, minerals, coffee, cocoa and a multitude of other natural resources and then factor in the human contributions of the millions of Africans who were forced to provide free labor not only in the United States, but also England and Europe and the Caribbean, you wonder if there are even numbers which can express this financial contribution.

These nations were never adequately compensated, or in some cases, were never compensated at all, for all of this. And now these nations find themselves chained with a new kind of burden, that of enormous debts owed by African, Latin American and Asian nations to the bank and industries of the United States, Europe and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., calls this "a new form of slavery as vicious as the slave trade."

The debt burden of developing nations is now so large that it can never be repaid. Indeed, many African nations spend between a third and a half of their gross national product on repaying the interest on the debts they have incurred. And because their debts may only be paid off by using foreign currency, they are forced to use money from exports and from new foreign loans to pay off their debts. They are forced to pay off their debts rather than provide health care, or education, or adequate housing or subsidized farming for their people. "Must we starve our children to pay our debts?" asks former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere.

Look at what the foreign debt means to some of Africa’s nations. Ethiopia’s debt of $10 billion is not much compared to the $11 billion which Europe spent on ice cream in 1997, but it is thirteen times the amount that Ethiopia earned in exports in 1996. Thus, Ethiopia was forced to use 44 percent of its export earnings on debt payments.

Or take Zambia, which owes $7.1 billion to donor countries and international financial institutions. It has been forced to spend more money on debt servicing than on all education and health expenditures combined in a country where 70 percent of the people live below the poverty line.

Or take Ghana, lauded as one of Africa’s success stories during President Clinton’s visit. Ghana’s gross national product in 1996 was roughly equal to its total external debt of $6.2 billion. Because it must repay the debt first, its power supply is threatened because it has not been able to update its aging and inadequate infrastructure. Nearly all of its debt service payments are financed by new debts, grants and sales of public companies.

Or take Zimbabwe, formerly known as Rhodesia after the English capitalist Cecil Rhodes. Zimbabwe now spends 37 percent of its GNP on debt repayment. Despite its high taxation rate (40-45 percent), its government is unable to invest in its people because of the huge repayment it is forced to make on its $5 billion debt. Indeed the total foreign debt owed by sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) added up to $208 billion in 1996. Similarly, Latin American debt will reach $706 billion at the end of this year.

Now religious leaders around the world are saying ENOUGH. There is no way that the richest nations in the world can morally continue to extract payments of foreign debt by the world’s poorest nations. Thus Pope John Paul II and the U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the archbishops and bishops of the worldwide Anglican communion (known as the Episcopal Church in the U.S.) the World Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches in the USA and others have joined together to call for a cancellation of the foreign debt of the world’s poorest nations. Using the biblical mandate calling for Jubilee every 50 years when debts are forgiven, these religious leaders have joined their voices in support of Jubilee 2000, an international grassroots effort to cancel the debt and work for the alternative investment of these dollars into human development of poor nations.

Now Representatives Jim Leach and John LaFalce have introduced the Debt Relief for Poverty Reduction Act (H.R. 1095) which calls on the U.S. government to cancel most of the debt and to encourage the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to work for similar debt relief. And there’s a call for people who care about Africa to telephone their congresspersons on May 25, 1999, African Freedom Day, and ask them to (1) cancel Africa’s crushing debt, (2) maintain the African Development Foundation, a fund created by the Congress in 1995 to explore innovative grassroots development in Africa and (3) restore funding for the Development Fund for Africa which prioritizes support for women, the poor and rural areas in Africa.

If you want more information on Jubilee 2000, write to Jubilee 2000/USA, 222 E. Capitol St., NE, Washington, DC 20003 or call 202-783-3566 or e-mail: [email protected].
For more information on H.R. 1095, write Bread For the World, 1100 Wayne Ave., Suite 1000, Silver Spring, MD 20910 or call 301-608-2400 or e-mail; bread @bread.org.
For more information on African Freedom Day activities to end the debt, write African Americans for Aid to Africa, c/o International Possibilities Unlimited, P.O. Box 4430, Washington D.C. 20017, or call 202-723-5622.