Sir, - In 1991 the then chief economist for the World Bank, Mr Larry Summers, wrote the following in an internal memo: "Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of dirty industries to the LCD's (lower income countries)? . . .the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable, and we should face up to that. . .Under-populated countries in Africa are vastly under-polluted; their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. . . The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million chance in the odds of prostate cancer is obviously much higher in a country where people survive to get prostate cancer than in a country where under five mortality is 200 per thousand."
Reading the above gives a somewhat chilling clue about where some among the "powers that be" are coming from. . .not a place of equality of esteem and shared resources, that's for sure.
Philip Donnelly is quite correct when he says that Africa teems with natural resources (July 29th). However foreign companies which covet control over these resources find willing helpers in big power governments and their financial agents such as the World Bank/IMF. So called "development banks" lend money for specific projects which require expensive contracts with powerful corporations. When one balances loans given and contracts paid for, the main beneficiaries are the corporations and the élites of poor countries. Little money goes to ordinary people who are often displaced and further impoverished by such glamour projects.
Loans are never "free" money. Quite apart from the speed at which compound interest adds up, much of the lending that is now causing so much misery was done during the Cold War years as a way of buying allies. So what if the borrower was patently corrupt, a military régime or a well-known megalomaniac. . .all is fair in love and Cold war and the leaders of neither side are alive to face the consequences or pay the bill.
People who live and work in developing countries see the effects of debt at first hand - the badly staffed and equipped hospitals, the absence of antenatal care for those who cannot pay for it, the unvaccinated children, the deaths from dirty water, measles, and hunger.
Added to all this there is the Aids/HIV pandemic which threatens to wipe out a whole generation of teachers, nurses, doctors, politicians, leaving the young and the elderly to fend for themselves. What Western leader, government minister of EU official would change places with their African counterpart?
The Irish Government did say last week that the only solution to the problem was debt cancellation. Having spun that neat news headline, it then went on to say that since the "highly indebted poor country initiative" (HIPC) is all that's on offer they might as well go along with it. The Irish Government is where it always is: making promises, breaking promises and singing loudly from the big boy's hymn-book.
Debt exists to be a lever by which poor-country economies are controlled by wealthy interests. Remove debt and that lever is lost. Debt ties governments in dollar-coloured tape and undermines democracy. The West never left Africa. The independence granted excluded the purse strings. Power-crazed leaders and policies are not the monopoly of impoverished countries. - Yours, etc.,
MÁIRE KELLY, Dublin 5.